AN EXERCISE IN PARTING

Ayanna Dozier, USA, 16mm, 3 min, 2022 an exercise in parting is the concluding film in “Close, But No Cigar,” a trilogy of short 16mm films that take inspiration from adverts and soft porn aesthetics of the 1970s. Renegotiating desire, heartbreak, grief, and its mutations and appearances in the body, the images of the series are intentionally seductive, but they ultimately fail to deliver upon the aesthetic promise of selling the audience something, or giving them an image of sex.

A go-go dancer walking home from work late at night. She attempts to resurrect her lost childhood on kiddie rides in front of a small store. Close-up images of the artist’s face collapse into abstraction as the pony ride breaks down.

Ayanna Dozier (1990). Works in film, photography, printmaking, performance, and installation; exhibitions and screenings at galleries and festivals including Hauser & Wirth, Microscope Gallery, CROSSROADS, BlackStar Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Prismatic Ground, and The Block Museum; films in permanent collection of Whitney Museum of American Art. Author of Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope (2020) for Bloomsbury’s 331/3 series. Lives in New York, New York.