Seedbed V
2024
Fabric, found objects and materials, cardboard, electric lights, video

Seedbed V is a ruin. Arranged throughout the installation are a shopping cart, bottles of dried tears, a beauty-masked mummy, an animal skin, items on a laundry line representing personal archives, personal holdings, embodied histories and figurative body bags. Each is an ending and a beginning at the same time--they act as seeds for an ongoing looping narrative told through eight short videos created by Marisa Williamson and her students, Grace Do, Ava Foulk, Alyssa Manalo and Jhordawna Richa. The work is an iteration of Seedbed - a series of installations inspired by past performances as the historical persona, Sally Hemings. The work engages with questions of monument. What is an appropriate moment to a foremother? How can a monument transform and evolve over time? How might a monument serve as a vessel or vehicle for other histories and possible futures?

Student Statements: Seedbed V

Jhordawna Richa’s shopping cart and video were inspired by conversations about struggle and bad habits portrayed on TikTok and primarily TikTok live. In the video the artist is coursing through a post-apocalyptic world with the remains of the world's belongings in a shopping cart. Filled with the world's sentiment, the artist becomes overwhelmed with the reality of being left in ruins. The shopping cart is meant to symbolize the politics of hoarding. The video captures the chaos and hysteria that comes from cramming important and unimportant stuff into one exhausted vessel and the disassociation that comes from carrying so much baggage.

Alyssa Manalo’s character drowns in a sea of voices. Inspired by the idea of someone who never stopped crying after the 2016 election, the persona bears her own personal trauma as well as the chaos of the world in which she lives. The character is crying, indefinitely, on behalf of all confused young women, knowing no way to escape turmoil after so many years. Her bags—bottles—are filled with endless tears that follow her everywhere she goes, regardless of the occasion. Remnants of her troubles mark the space she used to inhabit, with tears drying and crystallizing on each bottle.

Ava Foulk’s mummified form of a young girl covered in beauty masks emerged from a desire to explore the preservation of girlhood, environmental factors that cause early onset maturity, and the masks we are forced or choose to wear to maintain a youthful facade or hide aspects of ourselves. The theme surrounding masks dives into the simultaneous preservation and decay inherent in the mummification process by engaging in a parallel conversation regarding preteens' attempts to act older than they are by plastering their faces in beauty products. The corresponding video amplifies female voices—ranging in age from middle school to mid-60s—and sheds light on narratives that linger below the surface.

In her video, Grace Do costumes herself as a pouched marsupial–playing both a caregiver and the child within the caregiver's pouch. Through this novel projection, Grace plays with themes relating to immigration, familial relationships, and identity through the interactions between a parent and child sugar glider. The dialogue is derived from her experiences being raised by Vietnamese refugees. Her work presents a playful but revealing perspective on the immigrant parent-child relationship.

About the artist

Marisa Williamson is a project-based artist who works in video, image-making, installation and performance around themes of history, race, feminism, and technology. Williamson holds a BA from Harvard University and an MFA from CalArts. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Art at the University of Virginia with a research focus on Blackness.

Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout the US including SOHO20 and BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NYC;  Vox Populi, The Print Center and  Monument Lab, Philadelphia, PA; Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL; Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA; as well as internationally at Stefania Miscetti Gallery, Rome, Italy; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) in Berlin. She was a participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2012 and the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 2014-2015. Williamson’s work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts award and with numerous grants including Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Virginia Humanities, The Graham Foundation, Rema Hort Mann Foundation and the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.