HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRIVATE PERSON

Performance Art, Visual Poem, Photographic Series (Published September 2023)

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRIVATE PERSON" is a multimedia series that delves into the chaos theory’s principles of sensitivity and determinism. Devised according to instructions received in a vivid dream warning of an impending fatal event, HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRIVATE PERSON documents an attempt at altering fate by relentlessly heeding the most drastic of intuitions. 

The artist enlists her estranged high school sweetheart to shave her head and release a dozen butterflies as a copious dosage of psilocybin gradually dissolves her emotional defenses. The artist then harnesses her physical and psychological fragility to summon ancestral presences through improvisational dance. The 4-hour performance unfolds as a meditation on ego death and radical acceptance.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRIVATE PERSON’s live performance, held at Alchemical Studios, is re-scripted in a visual poem that juxtaposes the artist’s metamorphosis to the destruction of civilization and resurrection of nature.

CREDITS:

Film Directed + Produced by: SOL / Treasure Faith Brooks

Performance directed by: Grey

Director of Film Production: Grey

Director of Still Photography: Dumebi Malaika Menakaya

Creative direction by: SOL

Film edited by: SOL

Styled by: Shavonna Jackson + SOL

Assistant Production Coordinator: Marley Davis Hewitt

Dancer: Morgan Burns

Male actor: Cassius Johnson

Audio written and produced by: SOL

Song sampled: Cantar das Kandakinhas by Pedro Ricardo

Poem: “Happy Birthday Private Person” written by SOL, 2023