Rituals

View Rituals for free at S1 Artspace or on our Online Exhibitions Platform.

Deborah Findlater’s multi-channel installation Rituals sites the self as a gateway for healing and care, promoting autonomy for Black women, femmes and non-binary folk. An artist-filmmaker and DJ, Findlater brings together immersive sound, moving images displayed across three monitors and a hand-dyed rug to create an installation that acts as a sacred space for the viewer to contemplate their own rituals of self-preservation.

Findlater’s moving images relate her embodied experience, showing close-cropped perspectives of her body within the frame—nails being painted, hair braided and her face or body engaged with “curative, restorative touch,” as we hear described by Black Feminist theorist Hortense Spillers on the soundtrack. We view these actions while thinking about the places in which they take place; this work was recorded in the artist’s bedroom. Rituals brings the viewer into an environment of immersive intimacy, exploring the complex interplay between independence and interdependence.