Light Work’s Urban Video Project (UVP) is pleased to present the exhibition of Crystal Z Campbell’s original video, “Makahiya,” on display from Feb. 22 through June 1 at their architectural projection site on the north facade of the Everson Museum of Art.
This exhibition features new work by Campbell, commissioned by Light Work for exhibition at UVP. Campbell was in-residence at Light Work in June of 2023 to create this work.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Crystal Z Campbell will present a special in-person event on Thursday, March 21 at 6 p.m. in the Everson Museum auditorium.
An installation view of the original video, “Makahiya,” is projected onto the Everson Museum.
“Makahiya” is an original video by Crystal Z Campbell, commissioned by Light Work for the UVP architectural projection. Campbell was in-residence at Light Work in June of 2023.
“Makahiya,” a Tagalog word that translates to “shame” or “shyness”, is Campbell’s latest short experimental film. Rooted in botanical research on a plant that displays the unusual trait of thigmonasty, or touch-induced movement, Campbell’s film is structured like intertwined vines. Digital video filmed on a recent trip to their mother’s ancestral homeland in the Philippines mingles with hand-drawn animations, manipulated photographs and archival news coverage of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo and its aftermath. “Makahiya” explores this seemingly sentient plant’s paradoxical identity, from rampant “invasive” weed to medicinal plant, reflecting on photosynthesis, memory and the violent colonial impetus of regimented forgetting.
“Makahiya” is an excerpt from Campbell’s longer, forthcoming film project, “Post Masters.” This body of work is drawn from Campbell’s familial history–a Black military father formerly stationed in the Philippines and Filipinx mother hailing from the archipelago, who both retired from the U.S. Post Office. Campbell explores both explicit and implicit traces of labor, landscape, love and bodies as intimate agents, modes, and witnesses of empire ripe for decolonizing through the unraveling of sound, image and cinematic time.
Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker and writer of Black, Filipinx and Chinese descent whose works center around the underloved. Working through archives and omissions, Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but under-told or unspoken. Select honors include a Creative Capital award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, and Whitney ISP. Campbell was a featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar and their works have been screened or exhibited at SFMOMA, Drawing Center, ICA-Philadelphia, Artists Space, MOMA, and Block Museum amongst other venues. Their short film, “REVOLVER,” received the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and was featured in the Berlinale Expanded Film Forum. Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, and contributions to World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, Hyperallergic and Beacon Press. Campbell’s work will have a solo exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum in the fall of 2024 as the recipient of the Freund Fellowship. Campbell is currently an associate professor of art and media study at the University at Buffalo.
