Ephraim Nehemiah—The Autobiography of Absence: Visual Experience
Breaking generational curses requires interrogating the damage that haunts your lineage. Much of the disparity within male child-involvement can be linked to harmful patriarchal ideologies that continue to persist. This work speaks to the sea of children either lacking in sufficient agency, lacking in care or lacking in healthy and sustainable parental connections. Some of the pivotal inspirations for this project are the Christian Biblical tellings of Jesus Christ, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, James Weldon Johnsons’s God’s Trombones, and the American landscape of fatherhood.
This project addresses political and social issues in a manner that contributes to understandings of gender and aids the constant need for discussion around parenting. Additionally, it interrogates faith-systems that influence societal conditioning and creates a dialogue around the ways they can be reimagined to expose harmful ideologies.
The proposed project is a portion of a larger artistic series centered around the exploration of generational curses, absence, the lineage of trauma, self-discovery, and grief. Each portion takes dives into these topics in various mediums. This particular project uses theater, design, and visual recordings. A 15-minute theatrical piece incorporating construction, fashion, and performance art.
