THE BANSHEE UNDE[RAGE] | SHAN Wallace

Special Residency
Written By Elsewhere Living Museum & Artist Residency
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October 2018. Installation view. Museum collection mannequins, wire mesh, and found objects; spray paint; photographs. Dimensions variable.

How do we remember? How do mourning and rituals look culturally? How does adaptation to marginalization and social exclusion influence one’s role in accessing memories, and their capacity to mourn? What does that look and feel like?

The Banshee Unde[rage] is testament of the past and present, not as fixed narratives but a multiplicity of experiences with grief, memory, and mourning. Inspired by WALLACE’s own personal revelations, including the beginning of her “‘Saturn Return,’ have been a challenging but spiritual transitional period [for her].” The installation serves as a testimony of Black folks who share experiences and are familiar with mourning through memories.

WALLACE curated and transformed this 3rd floor room into a vigil with a raw aesthetic and familiarity to the vigils within Black culture, especially ones in Baltimore experienced by the artist. Each piece in the project serves as a construction of historical and cultural collections of symbols to (re)connect and represent memories and mourning. Unde[rage] prompts audiences to join her in mourning.

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Process

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Featured
SHAN Wallace
SHAN Wallace

Shan Wallace is an award-winning photographer, artist, and freedom fighter from East Baltimore. Inspired by the service of social change and the social power of art, and harsh realities rooted in racial and economic divides during her upbringing in poverty, SHAN uses the lens to document communities of the African diaspora. Her work conveys and reveals the social, cultural, and political narratives of black life serving as photographic documentation and archive of Blackness. Dedicated to demonstrating and promoting the value of archiving and photography, and increasing Black visibility, SHAN distributes her photographs internationally. Inspired by the legacy of photo albums, this ongoing project is a grassroots and accessible method of storytelling and archiving, articulating and legitimizing Black people’s experience. The goal is to provide subjects with physical copies of images of themselves to build or contribute to their own archive and challenging us to consciously or unconsciously enforce new ways of seeing, thinking, and being a part of the African Diaspora. SHAN has received recognition from the Baltimore Beat for Best Solo Show, Best Photographer from the City Paper, and awarded 2nd Place for Small Outlet Feature of “Losing Conner’s Mind” by Association of Health Care Journalists'. Her work has received widespread support from publications like the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Essence, and the now-defunct Baltimore City Paper. SHAN has also exhibited work in museums internationally from the Reginald F. Lewis Museum to Mariano Arts Center, in Havana Cuba. More recently, she's working on confronting oppressive politics and histories of Black Americans through collages and installations.

During Wallace’s residency, she created THE BANSHEE UNDE[RAGE].

Elsewhere Living Museum & Artist Residency
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