Brandy Michele Adams, Julie McKendrick, and Lynné Bowman Cravens
Site-specific performance, audio, and installation. Interpretive video documentation.
2021
Mañanaland presented Called To Heal, a site-specific installation and performance featuring the work of Lynné Bowman Cravens and Brandy Michele Adams. This collaborative project focuses on landscape, energy, movement, and relationships; inviting viewers to explore layers of dimensionality within the land and themselves. Called To Heal premiered at Mañanaland Marfa with a live performance and reception on Saturday, October 2nd, 2021, from 7-9pm.
For Mañanaland’s inaugural event at its new site in Marfa, artist Lynné Bowman Cravens was commissioned to create a new site-specific installation. Cravens created Canopy, a temporary fabric installation, juxtaposing tropical landscapes and foliage against the backdrop of the Chihuahuan Desert. Imagery of the Panamanian rainforest is printed onto sheer fabric, displayed on a metal frame, creating an oasis in the desert landscape. This new space invites viewers to immerse themselves into a lush jungle setting, escaping the arid climate of Marfa. However the sheer quality of the fabric, layers the canopy of the rainforest onto the surrounding desert, bringing the viewer back to their present location. The two landscapes sit side-by-side, bouncing between foliage and dirt, dust and rain. The exquisitely lush surroundings of the rainforest, set against the dry Texas desert, provoke us to consider relationships between the land, fauna, flora, and self.
In response to Canopy by Cravens and the Marfa landscape, artist Brandy Michele Adams imagined Called To Heal, a site-specific activation comprised of sound, light and movement. Viewers were guided through the land by Adams, who performed movements inspired by the elements of air, fire, earth, and water. Pausing in each direction – North, South, East, and West – to pay homage to each. Adams pushed her body in this endurance performance, exploring the deep connection with the body’s use of breath and linking into the energies of the earth. The work is meant to aid in sifting through women's emotions when healing that is held in the body. Through these movements Adams creates pathways to repressed trauma in order to release trauma. Using the heel of the foot for movement, Adams strikes the ground, floating above it, becoming stardust. Energy flows into, through, and then out of the body; grounding through the heel and into the earth. Called To Heal looks beyond the body and addresses physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Adams will conclude her journey through the landscape under the shelter of Canopy, coming to rest in the lush space. Adams collaborated with artist Julie McKendrick to compose sound for this performance. By engaging with site-specificity, Adams and Cravens seek to cultivate a call and response from the specific energy fields they occupy; with the ephemerality of the work being paramount.