Opening & performance • Steffani Jemison • Tumblers

About

SOLO EXHIBITION
Steffani Jemison
Tumblers
A proposal by Andrea Bellini
08.06-08.09.24

Opening Friday June 7, 6-9pm
Performance “In Succession (Means)” at 7pm

Center d'Art Contemporain Genève is delighted to present “Tumblers”, the first solo exhibition in Switzerland by New York artist Steffani Jemison. Tumblers covers fifteen years of the artist's work in various media, and will feature two performances by the artist, which will take place in the exhibition space on the opening and closing weekends.

Bodies in motion are at the heart of Steffani Jemison's artistic practice, which has always been based on how we bear the weight of physical and social forces. The exhibition unfolds the narrative potential of what it means to fall and float, to suspend and support. Based on a body of new and existing work (video, drawing, kinetic sculpture, performance), “Tumblers” traces the legacy of flight in black cultural traditions across a wide range of material forms.

The meticulously choreographed exhibition leads the viewer through a series of recurring themes in Steffani Jemison's work, as motifs and processes are repeated without ever resembling each other. Bodies become architectures in video sequences showing attempts to build a human pyramid; professional acrobats leap through the air without ever landing; the rigid geometries of a metal sculpture are disrupted by delicate glass drawings articulated to crossbars; polishing drums grind and sharpen debris dredged from the bed of Lake Geneva to smooth their rough edges.

Taken as a whole, the works gathered here pose the key questions that inform Steffani Jemison's work. “How do we move?” she seems to ask. “How are we moved by others? How can we let our bodies become means - supports - like bricks and beams? How can we stand and be stood at the same time? How can we learn on the fly? How can we take flight? And if we can only rely on ourselves, how can we use ourselves to find the shapes of the future?”