In this series of four photographs, Allana Clarke turns her gaze onto her own body as a means to interrogate her self perception in the context of social and cultural...
In this series of four photographs, Allana Clarke turns her gaze onto her own body as a means to interrogate her self perception in the context of social and cultural systems that attempt to mandate how she, as a Black woman, is valued by others. Clarke seeks out materials, processes and concepts that empower her to examine the shifting social and political hierarchies that keep Black bodies marginalized. These photographs mobilize the critical, selective eye of the camera to offer only glimpses of her body, indicative of a feeling of negation brought about by always seeing oneself in a fragmented way through the eyes of others in a commodified culture. Says Clarke, "The images oscillate between conceptions of desirability, and a presence intertwined with shame, violence and generational trauma, but moving through to a space governed by Black feminist futurity, that which is not yet actualized but must be.”