Returning to the Drought

Performance
Returning to the Drought (2023)
Single-channel video documentation
Northside Drive Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Returning to the Drought is a site-specific performance in which the artist returns to the church they were raised in, engaging the space as both a physical environment and a site of personal history.

The performance unfolds through a process of navigation and re-encounter. The artist moves through the sanctuary, revisiting areas associated with earlier experiences, before entering the baptismal located behind the choir.

Submerging into the basin, the artist reclaims a space historically tied to expectation and imposed identity. The action shifts the meaning of the site from one of obligation to one of self-determined presence.

The work addresses memory, belief, and transformation, using return as a method of confronting formative structures. It positions the body within a space that once defined it, allowing for a reconfiguration of its significance through lived experience.

Photography byGetsay