Break ∀way State
Painting Installation & Performance Archive
Break ∀way State reimagines the video Breakaway State (2020) through a series of paintings based on stills taken from the video footage. The video was commissioned for an online programme of the same name by The Parallel State, and funded by Future's Venture.
The installation traces the impact of migration, colonial legacy, and cultural memory through the embodied language of movement. The title draws on the universal quantifier '∀' (‘for all’), reframing it as a symbolic prompt, a gesture toward emotional alignment in the face of a violent state. It suggests a shared departure from inherited conditions.
These works critique and reveal themes of migration, drawing on the aesthetics and cultural layering of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust and themes of cultural migration explored in Zora Neale Hurston's writings. Break ∀way State, as an evolving work, functions as archival fragments, connecting motion to memory.
2023, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 50 cm with Floating Frame: 53.5 x 43 x 4.5 cm
2024, Oil on Wood, 16 x 15 cm
2024, Oil on Wood, 17 x 15.5 cm .
The installation subverts the mission of Empire and their ‘othering’ of subjects. I think about these moments as scores documenting self-determination and taking control over our own bodies, opposing respectable expectations. The mask has been taken off in this configuration taking on a life of its own. The performer in the image, however, is still wearing the very same mask, giving voice to multiple existence and agency located in inanimate objects, allowing these modes of expression to be temporal markers.
