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Whoa (1 and 2)<\/em>, 2017, installation views, I Don\u2019t Get It<\/em>, Gallery 44, Toronto, 2017.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Certainly, Hollywood cinema, rife with stereotypical, one-note depictions of people of colour, is an easy target. However, Cohene does not simply offer a critique of the mainstream film industry\u2019s track record in casting and types of representation. More ambitiously, she proposes another mode of creation and aesthetic content. For this very reason, Cohene\u2019s video of black faces edited together is particularly striking. It shouldn\u2019t be so, but it is rare and therefore poignant to see black women on screen in moments of reflection; not acting out, just being. This is heightened by the artist\u2019s careful, sensitive editing of these brief clips; she skilfully creates the impression that the camera is actually lingering on their faces, allowing viewers to take pleasure in her subjects\u2019 unique yet interconnected presences. Perhaps inevitably, Cohene\u2019s video of white faces, in contrast, has less visual and emotional impact simply because we are already accustomed to the spectacle of subtly emotive white characters on screen. White actors, after all, are already cast more often and in a wider variety of roles, thus having the opportunity to show more range. Journalist Candice Frederick argues that Michelle Obama\u2019s memoir is powerful for its revealing of her fears, vulnerabilities, and imperfections. Frederick writes, \u201cSimply identifying a feeling that is outside the overwhelming image of vitality aloud is an act of defiance in its own way, a rebellion against the confines of womanhood in which we\u2019ve been placed.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Candice Frederick, \u201cMichelle Obama took off the mask the public gave her. We can do the same.\u201d The Guardian (November 18, 2018), https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2018\/nov\/18\/michelle-obama-took-off-the-mask-the-public-gave-her-we-can-do-the-same.<\/span> This statement reveals a longing\u200a\u2014\u200aand need\u200a\u2014\u200afor more nuanced and varied representations of humanity expressed and embodied by people of colour. In I Don\u2019t Get It, Cohene reminds us of this simple desire. But more than that, she offers a glimpse of what a new type of narrative could look like and how compelling it could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The irony is that Cohene has managed to wrangle this work from the already \u201ctainted\u201d visual culture of main\u00adstream cinema. It is exciting to witness a new generation of filmmakers fully engaged in creating new modes of narrativity and visual aesthetics that reject Hollywood\u2019s discriminatory norms and stale stylistic standards; rather, these artists simply prefer to create work outside of its paradigm. Shirley Bruno\u2019s short film Tezen<\/em> (2016) is one such evocative example. Centring on a real-life family in rural Haiti, it is a tender retelling of a popular Haitian folktale, embodying a storytelling sensibility that is poetic, textured, and visually lush. Whereas Cohene has worked hard to tease out moments in the vein of black quiet through her editing process in order to transcend her source material, Bruno\u2019s subjects subtly embody this quiet from start to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n
In his study of Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari\u2019s writings on \u2018faciality,\u2019 author Richard Rushton identifies the face as \u201ca reduction of the infinite to the finite\u200a\u2014\u200ait is the channel that both connects the infinite with the finite and separates the infinite from the finite; it reduces infinite possibility to finite possibility, but in doing so, it unleashes potential.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Richard Rushton, \u201cWhat Can a Face Do? On Deleuze and Faces,\u201d Cultural Critique 51 (Spring 2002), 228.<\/span> In Hollywood films, the powerful potential of the face has been accorded primarily to white actors\u200a\u2014\u200awhose faces in themselves are typically considered a cause for celebration. In numerous critically acclaimed films, cameras follow white actors, who are sometimes asked to do little more than \u201cbe themselves\u201d moving through the world. Singular and sometimes silent, their portrayals are typically read through the well-known European auteur and American indie cinema tropes of existentialism: ennui, loneliness, melancholy. A recent example is Olivier Assayas\u2019 Personal Shopper<\/em> (2016), in which the fetishizing gaze of the camera rests on Kristen Stewart\u2019s blank face as she goes through the motions of her job in the aftermath of her sibling\u2019s death. It is much harder to name a film featuring a black protagonist who is the face with which viewers are asked to identify, or who is asked to project the emotional range of complex inner worlds. Rather, black actors are often hired to perform stock supporting roles like the warm-hearted, wise \u201cMammy\u201d or the sassy sidekick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scholar Kevin Everod Quashie argues that in order to counter an ongoing history of suppression, violence, and racism, African American communities have prioritized a public, political expressivity. Without criticizing the necessity for this outward-facing strategy, Quashie calls for the cultivation of expressions of interiority\u200a\u2014\u200aor \u2018black quiet,\u2019 as he conceives it\u200a\u2014\u200ato \u201csupport representations of blackness that are irreverent, messy, complicated\u200a\u2014\u200arepresentations that have greater human texture and specificity than the broad caption of resistance can offer.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Kevin Everod Quashie, \u201cThe Trouble with Publicness: Toward a Theory of Black Quiet,\u201d African American Review 43, no. 2\/3 (Summer\/Fall 2009), 337.<\/span> Going beyond \u201cthe \u2018hip personality\u2019 exposed to and performed for the world,\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Ibid., 339.<\/span> black quiet, according to Quashie, can equally \u201caffect social and political meaning, and challenge or counter social discourse, though none of this is its aim or essence.\u201d Cohene\u2019s video of black actresses calls to mind Quashie\u2019s call for the recognition of quiet, not only the #kickass, #blackmagic image predominantly promoted in pop culture. Watching I Don\u2019t Get It<\/em>, we want more: more time with these faces, more time to know them better, more of their stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/96-ART1-IMG3-IM_Chan_Bruno_Tezen_Family_CMYK_lr.jpg\")
<\/strong>Tezen<\/em>, video still, 2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains,
Tourcoing, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/96-ART1-IMG4-IM_Chan_Bruno_Tezen_Daughter_CMYK_lr.jpg\")
<\/strong>Tezen<\/em>, video stills, 2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains,
Tourcoing, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n