"A vessel that once held now is learning to hold itself
Primus is an exploration of dance, textiles, and clay’s movement possibilities and relationship to gravity.
It is named after American dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Pearl Primus.
Just like Primus defied gravity with her five-foot-high jumps, these pieces are both falling and holding their stance. The clay opening, flapping, swaying, like the dancer’s clothes.
Among different sources of inspiration, Primus is known to have choreographed based on imagining the movement she observed in African sculpture. I move in the opposite direction — sculpting based on observed movement from Primus and other women dancers from the late XIX and XX centuries.
What’s inside becomes an integral, visible part of the whole.
We fall, we break.
Physically, emotionally. We hold ourselves.
We stand up again.
Stronger. Wiser. Brighter." Bisila Noha