split my sides features new works by Amina Ross as they consider the spatial relationship between place and interiority. The exhibition's title derives from Maya Angelou's poem and performance, "The Mask," of which she writes to honor the "survival apparatus" performed by Black folks to conceal pain through laughter:

WHEN I THINK ABOUT MYSELF

I ALMOST LAUGH MYSELF TO DEATH...

I LAUGH SO HARD HA! HA! I ALMOS’ CHOKE

WHEN I THINK ABOUT MYSELF.

Ross tend to this concealed space of the Black trans and feminine interior. As the intensities of living press upon our desires, fears, dreams, and vulnerabilities, they constrain how we express selfhood, leaving cracks in our inner life. But the intensities, challenges, and violence we experience are not a fact of life or "the way it goes." Instead, systems of power link these circumstances to place through the construction of space. Seemingly natural and stable, space is imagined, then produced to determine how, when, and where we move. Spatio-temporal hierarchies are built (and protected) to threaten, constrict, and erase.

For those of us who are Black, queer, trans, and/or women, our experiences and struggles are intimately connected to the spaces in which we live, "Indeed, black matters are spatial matters."

Just as spatial power can physically displace and harm, these same spatial hierarchies impress upon our interior, shaping how we determine our selfhood and emotionally navigate our lives. Like Angelou, Ross honors the tactics needed by Black and/or queer and/or trans and/or women to physically and mentally survive. 

Yet, while Ross recognizes the need to hide, they also unmask the emotional landscape within. In their soundscapes, you feel the polite grin crack. In the film and sound piece Sonic Rupture: songs for(e) the swarm, Ross guides the actor through a flood of emotional states, "Try and imagine how you would feel." As they pause and move inward, they burst out laughing. Their eyes well, they breathe, they break, and back again. 

Life still happens between the spatial configurations that limit our freedom to move and feel as we want and need. The feeling of release and pleasure on a dance floor, of relaxation and restoration that comes with a place to rest, of joy and lightness while at play on a front stoop. While spatial power builds and rebuilds, as do we, mutually creating our world. We imagine and develop the liberatory places needed to feel safe and thrive. 

Through the natural forms of sculpture and the digital registers of sound and film, Ross spatialize the interior into an emotional geography with which we can engage.

Amina Ross is an artist, educator and life-long learner. Amina makes videos, sculptures, sounds, and situations that consider feeling, body-knowledge, and intimacy as technologies of survival for black queer trans and femme people. Amina has presented work in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London, Havana, Rotterdam, and The Hague. Amina learned about facilitation, world-building, and ritual through their familial practice of Lucumí tradition (Santeria), their work in queer art collectives 3rd Language and F4F, and through their time with the black solidarity economics working group Cooperation for Liberation. Amina worked as an educator at the MCA Chicago, was a lecturer at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a critic in the department of Film, Animation and Video at Rhode Island School of Design. Amina received their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and their MFA from the Yale School of Art. Amina is currently a Visual Artist in Residence at Abrons Art Center (New York, NY), A Technology Immersion Program participant at Harvestworks (New York, NY) and a 2022 NYC Community Trust Van Lier Fellow at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY).

CV

Tour dates: Available beginning in August 2022
Number of artists: 1
Number of artworks: at least 4
Space requirements: At least 1,250 sq. ft

Sonic Rupture: songs for(e) the swarm 004, a workshop and performance facilitated by Amina Ross
Friday, June 24, 2022

Ross invites participants to contribute to Sonic Rupture: songs for(e) the swarm 004, the fourth iteration of this project. This variation includes a writing workshop, experimental vocalizing exercises, and improvised performance. Inspired by Earthward Reprise, a sculptural work on view by Ross that resembles a game board, this workshop invites participants to consider how they navigate life: "How do you balance that protection with openness and vulnerability?" During the first portion of the workshop, these questions serve as prompts for participants to write and develop scores for movement. The workshop concludes as Ross leads participants through translating their scores into improvised performance atop and in relation to Earthward Reprise.


“split my sides”: a listening party organized by Stephanie Koch
Saturday, July 16, 2022

In conjunction with the exhibition, Amina Ross developed their experiments with sound into a split EP, split my sides, produced by Stephanie Koch and coming out in winter 2022. To celebrate their work and the closing of the exhibition, The Luminary is excited to host a listening party for the upcoming release. We’ll spin the record front-to-back, and then keep the groove going with a live DJ and a raffle of five limited edition test pressings of the EP.

1. Amina Ross
   Sonic Rupture: songs for(e) the swarm, Iteration 003, 2020 - ongoing
   Multimedia installation
   

2. Amina Ross
   Rest (Refrain), 2021
   Steel, work shirts
   Dimensions variable
   
   

3. Amina Ross
   Earthward (Reprise), 2021
   Quilted digital print on poly satin blend, machine embroidery, hand embroidery, batting, plywood, steel, casters, bolts, moss, stainless steel
   Quilting by Patricia Russell, Embroidery by ABCD Embroidery and Anngillian Cruz
   120″ × 120″ × 34.5″
   
   

4. Amina Ross
   Emotional Weather (intro), 2021
   Digital print on paper, quilting pins
   192″ × 108″