Hernease Davis

Solo Exhibition: Break with me, Foundation.

Pratt MWP Gallery | Munson Williams Proctor Institute

Utica, NY

On view from February 2 - March 3, 2023

My Exhibition Statement:

Break with me, Foundation is a physical expression of Hernease Davis’s psychological process of healing from a painful familial upbringing. Using camera-less techniques, cyanotypes on fabric, silver gelatin photograms, sound, and crochet, Hernease has created a site-specific installation that translates a private and difficult process into a space which catalyzes connections with others around notions of care, relations and deeply personal histories.

Hernease uses the flexibility of photography to respond to and document the arduous process of self-repair. She uses darkroom paper or cyanotype treated fabrics as a surface on which to lie down, cry, meditate or nap. She sometimes grips the paper, physically exchanging her distress with the material before using the cracked silver gelatin surface to make a portrait. She improvises crochet stitches into a panel of paper, grafting in an inherited skill that brings her peace. Hernease works instinctually and slowly, developing her photograms over the course of hours in the darkroom and her sun-sourced cyanotypes over the course of months. She chooses to leave portions of her cyanotypes undeveloped so that they may continue to shift and respond to the environment in reference to her ongoing transformation in healing from deep wounds.

Music is integral to Hernease’s recovery, and so it is integrated into her installation. She creates sound pieces she calls Hums, by layering and rotating her voice around a chord or musical key she enjoys. Hums are rich, textured soundscapes that accompany and guide Hernease through periods of depression, anxiety and grief.

Break with me, Foundation is an invitation to go deep. Her multi-media works embrace the artistic practice’s ability to be a surface of psychological and interpersonal communion, connection, expression and freedom.

“…new love.” is a growing self-portrait series. I am selectively developing and felting cyanotypes on silk, linen and canvas, leaving the undeveloped portions of the fabric to continually change and react to the environment.

“…new love.” evolved out of A Womb of My Own (Mistakes Were Made in Development). I am continuing to craft my practice into an environment that allows me to confront my personal experience of trauma. As I change, the work changes. As the work changes, it changes me. “…new love.” is a mark of a new phase in my healing process.

This is an ongoing series. I will post as I go and as we evolve.

These pieces are a new direction for my current series, A Womb of My Own (Mistakes Were Made in Development). Here, I am crocheting around and into photographic paper. Instead of using stitching patterns developed by other craftspeople, I sit with my paper and improvise my own stitching directions until I have encased the paper. I then use the paper as a space to make my photograms. The working title I am giving to this new direction is Bare With Me, Foundation.

After my fifth move in two years in New York City, I began collecting black plastic bags from the streets of my then home, Harlem. Collecting them gave me a sense of ownership in yet another unfamiliar neighborhood. They often floated, untethered to their origins - the way I felt. These still life images were my attempt to ground them (and myself).  

In this series, “Flesh Against”, I used black plastic bags I collected from the street.  I grafted them into my darkroom practice, using them as filters over my self-portraits. These objects are dark, yet translucent.  The final image is a melding of my hand, and the nature of these objects.