ReImagining: Video/Photo Presentation and Panel as part of Innuendos
As part of the Art Exhibition: Innuendos we present artists Ijeoma D. Iheanacho and her amazing project reImagining.
The reimagining project is a series of 300 photographs of 100 women of color.
“The reImagining Speaks is a video series that gives voice to the women lending their images to the reImagining. This series allows you to hear for yourself why this project is so important to me and these 100 women.”
The birth of the reImagining
The only thing worse than being misrepresented in your culture, is being disappeared from it. Imagine having to vacillate between the two. If you can, you know what it is to be a Black woman in America. Not Oprah, not Michelle, not Kerry. But the “everyday” Black woman being followed by the store detective. The “everyday” Black woman straining to see herself on TV or in the magazines. The “everyday” Black woman wondering where she fits in this society and why she is not allowed to contradict the false narratives that our culture has heaped upon her. These narratives often lead to a very tragic end. The reImagining is a photography installation conceived out of frustration. Frustration born out of not seeing myself, and those that look like me and have lived through similar experiences, adequately represented in mainstream media, culture, and society. Armed with this frustration, I asked 100 women of African descent to work with me to create a photographic installation to explore the stereotypes that impact their everyday lives, and to create the images that more accurately re-present them as individuals. The reImagining is a visual arts project in the process of giving these women the right to determine for themselves the images they want representing them.
