Holly Graham

Leaning Against or Holding

An online commission for web-project space Skelf in 2018.

to have and/or to hold

holding space

leaning against or holding

a slow space

in the hold

navigating

or processing

fast paced

an almost varnishy dipped black

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The work takes the form of a collection of gifs made using photographs of blackamoor sweetmeat bowls, sourced from online image searches and digital auction house catalogues. These moving images are interrupted by layered, scrolling and fading groupings of text. The texts include fragments from interviews conducted with V&A African Heritage Tour Guides as part of Sweet Swollen: You Can’t See It, but I Have One Here and I Can Show You, alongside extracts from an accompanying written response by writer Amy McCauley that collages together William Morris, Claudia Rankine and James Baldwin to interrogate ideas of fetishised beauty and servitude.

propping up

bent over the bowls they’re both bent over the bowls

she’s got again

to be beautiful

one foot set in front of the other

in your house

and her

both elbows are flexed

but at hip level

offering with one hand and still holding in the other

brutality

in your house

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