This larger-than-life hologram makes a case for hiding in plain sight. The iridescent figure hovering in this gallery is projected using a technique called Pepper’s Ghost, which dates back to Victorian stagecraft. Despite its resemblance to a digital avatar, Flo depicts a real performer, who dons a wearable sculpture created by Mujinga and sways to an electronic score, also by the artist.
Named after Mujinga’s late mother and inspired by the 1990s Jamaican bodybuilder Midnight (Ann-Marie Crooks), this work experiments with technology to generate a body suspended between presence and absence. Flo occupies space the way that a sculpture might, but, depending on your position in the gallery, it can easily slip from view. “For me the future is about this utopian possibility of being in charge of your visibility,” Mujinga has said. “Because up till now Black bodies are either visible and being policed, or they’re completely invisible.” In an era of digital footprints and racialized surveillance, Flo proposes that darkness can help us to imagine other bodies—and other worlds.
Organized by Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator, Department of Film, with Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance.
