Alexandra Gelis

In a number of interlocking episodes, five women weigh in on growing up in capitalism. Poetries of survival are interwoven with an adaptation of Mary Oliver’s iconic poem Wild Geese.

A garden between Oakland and Berkley where its inhabitants, marginalized by gentrification, plant fruit trees and flowers to pay homage to their loved ones who died in battles against poverty. This is a space of love and freedom cared by Brian for the last 25 years. The island resists, as a living legacy of the Black Panthers who were the first to organize the neighbourhood.

Entries are Exit points to more complex Entries. It is a visual exploration, an assemblage of forces. The doing an undoing's of my mother: a warrior. The film is part of a large-project "Doing and Undoing: Poems from within", a series of art interventions created during my mother’s cancer and healing process.

An intimate exploration of the bodies belonging to six queer individuals. This animation, made up of hundreds of high-resolution photographs, unabashedly examines the evidence of physical change and transformation: top surgery scars, tattoos, and other traces. The bodies are fragmented, as are the stories affiliated with these traces, and identities remain delightfully elusive. “Borders” is available as a single-channel work or as an extended installation.

Marching politics: a tribute to the feminist struggle in Latin America. Recorded at the Women’s March in Lima, Peru, 2019.

Hacer y Deshacer: Poems from Within (2019) is an interactive video installation. Most of the video sequences show Gelis’s mother undressing, one strand of yarn at a time, sometimes in Panama’s Casco Viejo (historic district), sometimes in the turbulent waters of the Pacific. Using her mother’s body, she tells the story of a cancer survivor, the story of countless others. Gelis invites us into the healing process: the viewer can change the order of the videos by pulling down reels of threads connected to electronic components concealed in the Priscilla sewing box. In doing so, the artist provides opportunities for healing collectively. She uses interventions in situ, video, super 8 and 16 mm film, threads and sculptural elements made with hair, and photography. As part of this process, she has facilitated artistic workshops at the oncology hospital working with women patients at the Oncology Hospital in Panama City.

The movie opens with a quote from Borges: "The best imitation consists of the original's destruction and the creation of a self referential text." While a galaxy of Super 8 luxuries erupt, the film hand processed, the emulsion cracked in order to reveal its silver secrets, a silhouetted camera operator attempts to contain the experience, even as he is subjected to the same chemical disintegrations. -- Mike Hoolboom