Steffani Jemison

Bound draws on motifs of the limitless sky and the broader impulse to take to the air, extending her interest in legacies of dispersal and fugitivity in Black cultural traditions. Jemison’s work across media has long been concerned with the weight of both physical and social forces, but here defying the gravitational pull is consonant with surrendering to it, envisioning new possibilities for liberation in both suspension and descent. Perhaps best-known for her hypnotic video portrayals of highly skilled performers, Jemison considers the physical exploits of Chicago-based tumblers who twist, leap, and vault themselves into the air in her latest moving image work. The film lingers on their suspension, often cutting to images of a vast sky overlayed with the distorted logo of the country’s largest trampoline company, SkyBound, wading in its contradictory intimations and lexical possibilities. Narrations from two tumblers envisioning the experience of flying and a feverish, improvised soundtrack by drummer Brandon “Buz” Donald, embody the kind of heedless freedom suggested by flight, enunciated by the lush strokes of the night sky from a found theatrical backdrop against which the film is framed.