From Where and When I Enter: A Southern Black Femme Reckoning
by Lee Laa Ray Guillory for South Summit 2021
Standing knee deep in murky water, I unravel the tail end of my braid to welcome the water’s embrace. I mark my presence with a deep sigh then inhale the musty scent of the Mississippi river. My breath is stolen by the distant melody of a song I can’t quite discern from the gawking of a pelican loitering near my abandoned sandals. A reverb of metallic whistles strikes my ears, disrupting the rhythm of my breath and inspiring the bird to retreat into the smoke of the Louisiana sky. The sound grows closer and reveals itself as the Steamboat Natchez. The song “Lady Marmalade” by the Labelles emerges from the balcony of the boat. The song is quickly drowned by the chants of white tourists who have now spotted me in my lonesome. I unsuccessfully revert back to my intentional breathing and make the inevitable decision to part ways with the river. As I trek back to the shoreline and begin my journey up the Ninth Ward levee, I am met by a sea of white bodies with camera phones recording the New Orleans city landscape. The white tourists of the boat greet those on the shore, and a ping-pong match of “Who Dat” begins. As I wring out the vestige of the Mississippi from my hair, a white lady from the group approaches me singing her pitchy rendition of “Lady Marmalade.” She takes one look at me and says, “You’re so beautiful! Wait there, I want to take this photo.” I ignore her presence, continuing to rebraid my damp hair while she simultaneously pulls out her phone to “capture” non-consensual photos of me. She asks, “Is that all of your hair?” It is the irony of this entire moment that rebirths the question I have yet to answer: from where and when do I enter?
Growing up, I quickly recognized the nomadic nature of the women in my family, a byproduct of economic displacement and a strong desire to become women of their own making. The intersections of white supremacy and patriarchy would prevent them from fulfilling this desire, but their search for self expression birthed meaningful stories of triumph and self-determination. These women were storytellers, and truly, this is how our family survived. It was not long before I inherited their skills of survival, along with the deep desire to be a woman of my own making. I made photographs of them, memorializing their every word, both fact and fiction. They explained to me all I would need to live and all I would need to die; however, they never warned me of a professional world that had no interest in hearing my story, but would tell me who I was.
As a child I found solace in films filled with decay and southern landscape. It reflected the physical world I grew up in and the decomposition that followed it. The first time I saw Eve’s Bayou I resonated with the familiar silence of women in pain, the communal secrecy, and the sisterhood that served as the family’s only true protection. I was amazed by the swampy landscape, the alluring set design, and the familiar plot, but in truth it was the character Mozelle who most captured my interest. The strong-willed, caring, affectionate yet sorrowful aunt offered me a brand of femininity that was seductive, respectable, and ridden with power, and most importantly, centered no man. It was rare to find a story where a Black Creole Woman was cursed by love, yet continued to search for happiness on her own terms. She had a story that fully reflected the nuances of the southern Black femme experience. In Mozelle I saw my mother. In Mozelle I saw my grandmother. In Mozelle I saw my aunts and sisters. In Mozelle I saw myself.
In the wake of our current political climate, I consider the urgency of representation. With this same consideration, I witness this urgency used as a capitalist motif to exploit Black death for the sake of a broader audience. Big budgets and marketing strategies that emphasize Black labor have swindled audiences, but too often at the expense of Black stories that speak to the geographical and social distinctions that greatly inform Black experience. In short, we physically see more Black bodies, but we don’t “see” more Black stories.
This is demonstrated in my own personal journey as a southern Black femme artist. Early in my career I found myself increasingly underwhelmed by a lack of curiosity and institutional support for my work, especially when that work reflected my personal Black experience. The more I told my story, the more I was subject to tokenization. The more I spoke about my struggle for autonomy, the more people condensed my work to that of identity politics. It became a vicious cycle of the erasure of my humanity by way of focusing on the aspects of my work that included trauma. The art world wanted an art darling, not a storyteller. This ultimately silenced my voice. I learned more about how to tell my story by observing who was listening to me tell it. The more I spoke about Black suffering, the more I saw white bodies at my events. This pattern of exploitation was echoed in my experience with grant and artist residency applications as well. These artists’ resources relied heavily on white supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist frameworks to measure an artist’s credentials, while simultaneously calling for the most marginalized artists to share their works. The art industry’s gatekeeping forced me to make one of two decisions: either forfeit my integrity as an artist of Black experience in order to pander to a white audience, or explore alternative spaces in which to share my work.
I ultimately chose the latter, and in doing so was led back to the traditions of intergenerational culture exchange that already persist within the African Diaspora. I discovered the space for my work to exist without compromise was in the form of the urban archive. From scrapbooking to my grandmother’s curated dining room wall, there was a history of Black archival work all around me. Images of Black bodies via family portraits, diary entries, and other familial memorabilia tell the stories we have been looking for so desperately on screen.
Archives are continuous, living works of our own making that exist beyond the necessity of white access. It is in the archive that artists must ask themselves critical questions regarding power and representation.
It is the archive that takes the Black oral tradition of storytelling and immortalizes the Black experience by making accessible our truths from our own voice. In my case, it is where the nuances of my womanhood are prioritized and not sensationalized.
Recounting the impact of Mozelle’s character in my youth, I remember the creation of my own visual archive allows me to speak to the experience of generations to come. There is urgency to imortalize Black southern femme stories. Who we archive tells us much about who we are. I am unsure of when or where it is safe for me to enter mainstream media, but I find peace in the asking. For it is this asking that informs my archive, and creates the space for future generations to answer this for themselves.
ABOUT LEE LA RAY GUILLORY:
Guillory is a New Orleans based interdisciplinary artist and independent curator whose work is grounded in her devotion to Black mysticism and photographic investigation of intersectional identity. Guillory inherited rituals of hair maintenance, oral mythologies, and alternative photographic practices, serving as the foundational elements of her work. Guillory’s multifaceted art making practice is incited by Louisiana’s religious history of European, indigenous, and Afro-diasporic spiritual syncretization. Her interdisciplinary practice follows the tradition of art as ritual, with past works offering divination to the Mississippi River watershed, ancestral veneration via self portraiture, immersive photo-based installations, and spirit-led photography.
This piece was commissioned by the New Orleans Film Society for South Summit 2021. South Summit received critical support from JustFilms, which is part of the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program, and is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
