Jamilah Sabur

The Harvesters, 2022.

4K digital video, color, sound.

Duration 7:30 min.

"Sabur's The Harvesters (2022) moves between oversea and subaquatic, navigating geology, climatology, and porous waterways. Amid panoramas of the horseback riders in the surf and a Russian icebreaker plowing a frozen tundra, the artist appears dressed as cricket player moving elegantly, rhythmically, her face obscured with a gauzy mask. Diptych scenes of mineral extraction recall Victorian stereoscope vision and chondrocladia (a carnivorous deep sea sponge with branches that end in inflatable spheres, believed to have been in existence for over two million years) relays the sense and internal pressure of holding one's breath underwater." - Heather Diack, Associate Professor in History of Art, Photography and Visual Culture, Toronto Metropolitan University

Bio

Jamilah Sabur (1987, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica) lives and works in Brussels. Metaphysics, geology, and memory are recurrent themes in the work of Jamilah Sabur. Making critical contributions to the discursive spaces of labour and economies of movement, Sabur engages imaging on a planetary scale to re-calibrate our understanding of place, time and history. Sabur’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Fruits of Labour, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium (2023); Sinking Feeling, Or Gallery, Vancouver (2023); The Harvesters, Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2022); Eltanin, Broadway, New York (2022); DADA Holdings, Nina Johnson, Miami (2021); La montagne fredonne sous l’océan / The Mountain Sings Underwater, Fondation PHI, Montréal, Québec (2021). Sabur earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (2009), and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego (2014). Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, New Orleans Museum of Art, The Bass Museum of Art, University of Maryland, The Dutch National Bank and TD Bank Group.