In conjunction with the exhibition Projects: Ufuoma Essi, the artist joins us for the premiere of her latest film, The Center Cannot Hold (2025), alongside the New York premieres of Is My Living in Vain (2022) and Pastoral Malaise (2022). Born and based in southeast London, Ufuoma Essi creates films that center on Black feminist pedagogies and practices, drawing from a range of influences that span popular culture, historical records, archival footage, and the work of Black feminist writers and performers. This program highlights Essi’s concern for spaces of spiritual assembly, the politics of island life, and the myths of pastoral landscapes, all of which prompt questions about place and belonging.
Named after a celebrated gospel hit by the Clark Sisters, Essi’s Is My Living in Vain investigates the Black church as a vital space for fellowship, affirmation, and movement building. Essi initiated the film during a year abroad in West Philadelphia, where she noted commonalities between the city’s storefront congregational spaces and those of southeast London. In Pastoral Malaise, Essi confronts romanticized notions of the British countryside, revealing the contested histories of exclusion and absence that often lie beneath its veneer of verdant tranquility. By incorporating Una Marson’s poem “Spring in England” and Dorris Henderson’s 1965 rendition of the British folk song “One Morning in May,” Essi constructs a speculative counternarrative of rural Britain, interweaving imagined accounts with personal memories. Essi’s newest work, The Center Cannot Hold, is an essay film surveying the landscape, churches, and religious practices of the Mediterranean island of Corsica. The film grapples with how the enduring legacies of cultural imposition can reshape the sanctuary and solace typically afforded by a shared language and faith.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between Essi and Gee Wesley, former curatorial associate in the Department of Media and Performance.
Is My Living in Vain. 2022. UK. Super 8mm film transferred to high-definition video (color and black and white, sound), 40 min.
Pastoral Malaise. 2022. UK. 16mm film transferred to high-definition video (color, sound), 11:23 min.
The Center Cannot Hold. 2025. UK. 16mm film transferred to high-definition video (color, sound), 30 min.