Artist-to-Artist Conversation
manuel arturo abreu + Jaleesa Johnston (2 of 4)
manuel: How can I trace that if I don’t have the archive?
Jaleesa: It’s interesting that you said how can you trace that if you don’t have the archive. I’ve been thinking a lot more about what we store in our bodies, and how our bodies are a walking, but untrustworthy archive. I mean, you can trust it, but don’t trust that it’s gonna be the same every time you return to it. and don’t trust that the facts are stable. And so it’s interesting thinking about you thinking back to being in church, and you’re like, ‘I don’t have that archive.’ Well you do, but it’s just an archive that you’ll keep revisiting, And it will look different or feel different a little bit each time. Or you’ll remember something, or something will be there that wasn’t there before.
Listen to Jaleesa and manuel in this podcast, made in partnership with Michelle Hagewood of the Centrum Emerging Artists Residency, Port Townsend, Washington.
Jaleesa Johnston is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work explores the black female body as both subject and material through performance, video, photography, sculpture and collage. See her work here: jaleesajohnston.com.