IYABO KWAYANA
Select Installations
Crossing Over
Crossing Over (2020) is a 4-channel site-specific mixed media installation scheduled to be installed 2022 in Sapelo Island, Georgia on the anniversary of my mother’s passing. Following a nonlinear, collage-based structure, documentary footage of my mother undergoing a funeral rite (2017) is juxtaposed with footage of an Akan cosmological reference to the journey of the dead “crossing a river” before entering Samanadzie or heaven. The fragmented multiple screen format imitates the process of transitioning from one state of being to another.
Sample of Crossing Over
Liberation
My film and installation Liberation (2019), a single video screen installation projected outdoors on the exterior of a building at night, is a film about moving through pain through improvisation. Told non-verbally, the film explores the grief I felt after the disappearance of my brother and anchors itself in a collective improvisation of camera with a musical performer.
Watch Sample of Liberation
Bridge/ Refrain
Director: Roni Nicole Awande Films
DP: Iyabo Kwayana
A young woman arrives in the land of the ancestors. Here, she discovers that though there is healing for her wounds and safety in the arms of benevolent beings, her work is far from done. A beautiful antique vanity serves as a vehicle through which she discovers her charge and her crown: black bodies, buckling, but not breaking under the weight of american life. She takes her place amongst those who uphold us. The Crowned Ones. death is but a bridge. a refrain. there is more work to be done, now.
Commissioned by CMA as a part of its Women + Innovation series, bridge/refrain seeks to honor the feminine energy as both protector and nurturer, while confronting the epidemic of all manner of violence against women.