Jeanette Elhers_ We’re Magic, We’re Real (artist Activation)

Jeanette Ehlers, We’re Magic, We’re Real (artist activation)

Jeannette Ehlers Performance at Fisk University, part of EADJ’s Fall 2022 academic program calendar. The program of events for the semester was centered around the theme “Artistic Activism and the Power of Collective Resistance” authored between curator Selene Wendt and EADJ Founder, María Magdalena Campos-Pons. The program presented a set of vibrant discussions and artist activations that examined the consequences of social and historical inequities on the southern imaginary, as seen in art from Africa, Latin America, South Europe, South Asia, and the American South.

Jeannette Ehlers began the series We’re Magic. We’re Real in 2020. The entire series, which includes photographs, installations, and live performances, makes use of hair as an important identity marker across communities of African descent.

About the Artist: 

Jeanette Ehlers is a Copenhagen-based artist of Danish and Trinidadian descent whose practice takes shape experimentally across photography, video, installation, sculpture and performance. She graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. Ehlers’ work often makes use of self-representation and image manipulation to bring about decolonial hauntings and disruptions. These manifestations attend to the material and affective afterlives of Denmark’s colonial impact in the Caribbean and participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade—realities that have all too often been rendered forgettable by dominant history-writing. In the words of author Lesley-Ann Brown, “Ehlers reminds all who participate in or gaze at her work that history is not in the past.”

Ehlers insists on the possibility for empowerment and healing in her art, honoring legacies of resistance in the African diaspora. She merges the historical, the collective and the rebellious with the familial, the bodily and the poetic. Jeannette Ehlers has just been shortlisted for the national monument to The Windrush Generation at London Waterloo Station. On 31 March 2018 she unveiled I Am Queen Mary, a public sculpture project in collaboration with La Vaughn Belle, at KAS, Cph, DK

-Art Hub Copenhagen

“Until the lion has a historian, the hunter will always be the hero; Indtil løven har en historiker, vil jægeren altid være helten”

Originally commissioned by Danish designer Mads Nørgaard and first performed in November 2021, the durational performance We’re Magic. We’re Real (These Walls) featured Ehlers accompanied by supporting performers of African ancestry. 

For EADJ’s presentation of We’re Magic. We’re Real (These Walls), students from Fisk University and Vanderbilt University, along with local members of Nashville’s Afro- diaspora community, were invited to collaborate on the work by participating in collective braiding circles.

During the live presentation of We’re Magic. We’re Real (These Walls) on November 16, 2022, Jeannette Ehlers and supporting performers Camryn Johnson,Thea Jones, Karen B. Roberts, and McKenna Mimms were connected to Fisk University’s historic Cravath Hall’s first and second-floor pillars by long braids. Ehlers braids traveled from the artist’s head upwards along the staircase to the second floor pillars. The rope-like braids wrapped around the top of the pillars and then returned back down into eight smaller braid strands that reconnected to the head of the four supporting performers. Within the second floor of Cravath Hall, the supporting performers were placed around the building’s central pillars and were surrounded by the historic murals created by Fisk Alumni and influential artist of the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas. These murals, created in the late 1930s, highlight significant events, such as the Middle Passage, the Civil War, and the abolitionist movement.

Both Elhers and the supporting performers made slow rhythmic movements during the performance of walking forward and backward while holding the long strands of hair braids. Ehlers on the first-floor of the hall announced a repeated phrase at the start of each of her movements, a phrase said in both English and Danish: “Until the lion has a historian, the hunter will always be the hero; Indtil løven har en historiker, vil jægeren altid være helten”.  A sound piece played by stereos on the surrounding walls shared the roar of the Atlantic in the background, evoking ancestral lineages within the historical black college and pronouncing the enduring impact of the Middle Passage.

Jeannette Ehlers. We’re Magic. We’re Real (These Walls). Durational performance accompanied by Camryn Johnson, Thea Jones, Karen B. Roberts and McKenna Mimms for The Engine for Art, Democracy & Justice Fall 2022 program of events, titled “ Artistic Activism and the Power of Collective Resistance”. Cravath Hall, Fisk University, Nashville, 2022. Video by: LeXander Bryant.

Location: Cravath Hall, Fisk University, November 16, 2022. 

Stylists: Keva Anderson and Keyera Allen