S.1 Episode 2 // Bodies in Flux: Self-portraiture Outside the Canvas with Saya Woolfalk + Wang-Yao

Bodies in Flux: Self-Portraiture Outside the Canvas ​is an experimental storytelling episode with visual artist Saya Woolfalk in conversation with Wang-Yao. Saya describes her self-portraiture project that unravels the history of stolen stories and identity. She guides us in a process of unlearning and re-imagination through her use of unexpected materials incorporating Hudson river school paintings, medicinal plants, and what we don't know about Sojourners Truths' infamous "ain't I a woman speech."

This season was produced in connection to 2023 exhibit, "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America", an AAMP and PAFA collaboration curated by Dejay Duckett (AAMP), Judith Tannenbaum (PAFA), Mekhala Signal (PAFA), Michael Wilson (AAMP). This exhibit brings together 20 artists to respond to the question: Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy? The exhibit runs March 23 through Oct 8 of 2023 at the Historic Landmark Building in Philadelphia. 

For episode extras, and to learn more about the artists, hosts, and organizations involved, check out the Reckoning and Repair website: rnrphilly.com

Reckoning and Repair is part multimedia counter-archive, part laboratory, for telling stories and listening to stories in cities. Each season traces stories of resistance to (and repair from) the enduring and specific legacies of exclusion/withholding/erasure that haunt our cities. Through immersive oral histories and collaborative storytelling, student scholars, activists, and creatives illuminate the slow, difficult, yet vital work of accountability and healing in haunted worlds. The project is directed by Dr. Alissa Jordan at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennyslvania. ​