Zachary Fabri
Chanting Black Clouds, 2010.
Single-channel digital video with sound.
Duration 01:20 min.
This digital video is a kind of test proto-version of the final 16 mm film. I was testing and calculating approximately how many helium balloons could lift a dread stalk. The video test became its own surreal video with similar themes as the final: gravity, weight, tether and release. Soft, poetic movement and sound are paired with gritty, contrasted pixels to push the body beyond identifiable politics and into gestures of complexity. The title refers to energy.
I would say that video deals with cultural history and how the body keeps record, or stores memory in and on the body. Memory then scripts and choreographs how our bodies move through the world.
In another way that actual video is a memory of earlier version of myself.
Bio
Zachary Fabri is a Jamaican/Hungarian interdisciplinary artist engaged in lens-based media, language systems, and public space, often complicating the boundaries of studio research and social practice. Based in Brooklyn, NY, his studio practice yields work that includes drawing, photography, video, performance, and installation.
He is the recipient of awards that include The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and the BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize. Fabri’s work has been exhibited at Art in General, The Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, The Walker Art Center, The Brooklyn Museum, The Barnes Foundation, and Performa. He has collaborated on projects at the Museum of Modern Art, the Sharjah Biennial, and Pace gallery. In 2021, he exhibited at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Hungary and completed a solo project at Recess in Brooklyn, NY. He recently completed a solo exhibition at CUE Art foundation in 2022 in New York City.
Chanting Black Clouds, 2010. Single-channel digital video with sound. Duration 01:20 min.