Witness

A Ritual in Two Acts
By Stephanie Anne Johnson
A Site Specific Installation

Commissioned by the De Young Museum, San Francisco, California

Mixed media; African figure (wood), 35 mm slides from the permanent collection archives, slide projectors, video projector and surveillance camera.

Sound score: Stephanie Johnson
Voiceover: Malonga Casquelourd
Date: 2001

Installation Detail:
Slide Dissolve 1	Slide Dissolve 2

With eyes as deep and reflective as the bodies of water that cover the earth, this figure arrived at the DeYoung Museum in 1959. He is the longest living resident of African origin in the permanent collection.

I crossed many rivers to arrive at this place. I watch you, watching me as I watch you. I commune with the other figures here. We who are permanent residents have a language beyond location, culture, color and form. We comfort each other in states of shared solitude. We are sublime.

African art has provided inspiration to European artists for centuries. Its forms have shaped and defined modern art as we know it with little acknowledgment from the canon yet;

The human form is universal. Africa is the origin of all who watch, including those who reflect without absorbing and those who absorb without reflecting. While you are all shadows who will pass, I am eternal.

I give thanks to my ancestors who have swept the path before me. Special thanks for the inspiration given me by; Margaret Benson Thompson, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Jane Rosen and Fred Wilson.

Stephanie Anne Johnson