MeMoSa: On My Journey Now/A Man in Time by Jeary Payne
Student Artist-in-Residence Jeary Payne presents: On My Journey Now/A Man in Time
Friday, April 25th | 7 PM - 9 PM
Doors Open 6:30 PM, Installation Starts 7:00 PM
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On my Journey Now/A Man in Time is an installation performance film about my mother reciting a poem, by Maya Angelou and my grandfather, retelling the time he traveled to Washington, DC to hear Martin Luther King, Jr speak at the Lincoln monument, 1963, during my grandmother’s 60th birthday celebration in 1995.
What it is really about is Black Collective Memory and how our shared histories, and the ways in which we all exist within a context— what I am referring to as Lineage. And how memory and story acting as markers of time are able to situate us within that context/lineage in relation to others and worlds (temporalities) around us, those intersecting with our own.
This installation film is an immersive experience about grief and loss and absences but it is just as much about love and time, reverence and space and memory. As an artist and Oral Historian I’m interested in exploring what oral history as a practice can both do and be used for. I am in search of a visual language— something that is tangible and legible and spiritual and emotional. And through this work, it is my hope that the audience as viewers have an encounter with these such things.
Following the film there will be a brief conversation with the artist.
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Doors open at 6: 30 PM
To visit, please RSVP and contact us via email at movement@barnard.edu at least 24 hours before the event. We will coordinate your entry through the main entrance (3009 Broadway). Visitors with Barnard/Columbia IDs can walk in.
Jeary Payne (He/Him) is a third-year graduate student at Columbia University, pursuing a Master’s degree in Oral History. He is a multi-disciplinarian artist, telling stories and creating art across mediums. Based in Brooklyn, NY by way of Phoenix, Arizona. He is a musician, writer, orator, and photographer. In addition to his academic and creative practice he serves full time as an Associate Educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he oversees the museum's Teen Programs division.
Who will tell the stories after us? — is an essential question that serves as a guiding principle for his work as a visual artist and oral historian. He sees this residency as an opportunity to reimagine what Oral History can do and what it can be used for. And he’s interested in exploring the ways in which grief, loss and absences as well as love, time, space and memory interplay with each other through a Black visual lens and performance.
You can learn more about Jeary and his work at Sayjeary.com.