Shedding Light on the Self and the Collective is a comprehensive presentation of JenMarie Landig’s work, illustrating her distinctive practice across media, including: photography, video, movement, and mindfulness.

The photography and video exhibition centers representations of the self, connection, and community by shedding light on the illusion of a separate self. When the seemingly isolated self creates sources of support, solace, and celebration via connection to others, then one becomes tuned into the knowledge of oneness and belonging. A heavy burden is lifted as one is lit up by an expanding sense of identity that includes others. Just as the chorus of ancient Greek literature served as a cognate group of performers who speak with a collective voice on the action of the scene in which they appear, here, the figure of the chorus is invoked to give rise to individuals in unison. Connections are made visible by images of bodies in shared space, postured together as one, and posed with interlocking arms. 

Alongside this exhibition, Landig introduces a series of workshops, in collaboration with local yoga instructor Nena Georgitsi, that explore the intersection of creativity, mindfulness, and movement. During the workshops, she guides discussion and embodied practice around mindfulness and movement to deepen one’s relationship with creativity by considering the following inquiry: How can we more deeply listen to our body and understand the connection between experience-emotions-motion? 

Encompassing the spectrum of her creative output, Shedding Light on the Self and the Collective also debuts a new dance performed by Landig with the percussionist Lefteris Aggouridakis. The performance responds to the Greek city of Trikala where the residency is located. The city is named in tribute to Trikke, the daughter of Peneus, who was the river god in ancient Greek mythology. Drawing upon global histories of trade and cultural and artistic exchange, Landig focuses on the concept of fresh waters–a resource to be filled, emptied, shared, and flowing to and from outlets–to connect the site of Trikala to an Afro-Brazilian dance tradition grounded in the Candomblé religion created by enslaved Africans and their descendants who have been dislocated to Brazil. The word Candomblé can be traced to the Yoruba language and translated to English as “dance” or “dance with drums.” Landig’s performance will honor Oxum, the Candomblé deity of water and love–moving like tributaries flowing to the sea and arteries circulating blood to the heart.

The performance is also a form of self-reflective critique that raises questions about identifying as an American raised by an Evangelical Christian family and with Irish and Western European ancestors. This lineage holds values that are deeply ingrained in purity culture, divested of its cultural roots, and largely removed from the natural world. This cultural and socio-political inheritance plays a dominant role in profiting from the transatlantic slave trade and its violent implications that continue to the present day. The performance works as a language, a conversation, an exchange of energy moving through the body, space, community, and spirit of the moment. 

Shedding Light on the Self and the Collective follows Landig’s primary ideas and lexicon of forms as they appear and reappear throughout her work and range of media. Each artistic form functions independently and in conversation with the others, mirroring the way that Landig’s motifs create meaning as discrete units and through their interdependence. Together, they forge connections to materialize collectivity. The project mines the past and seeks to break down boundaries of time and place to make visible new possibilities for the future.