Filmmaker and artist, Justine Pluvinage debuts Amazons, a new video commissioned for the Resilient Images Residency Exchange by Hyde Park Art Center and Centre Regional de la Photographie (CRP).
For Resilient Images, Pluvinage spent ten weeks researching Chicago through its inhabitants to develop the short cinematic artwork for the Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery. Over this period, she met with a multi-generational group of women hailing from all parts of the city to glean an understanding of resilience in contemporary Chicago, a recurring theme in Pluvinage’s work. The film features a notable poet-rapper and peace activist, a young artist living with alopecia who has created an ornate chainmail headdress to reclaim and adorn her physical appearance, a seasoned bodybuilder, a voguing performer, a dancer empowered by her own physical disability, a Latinx painter, an art and social justice philanthropist, as well as a one-year old taking her first steps.
In the face of personal trauma, financial hardship, persistent systemic injustice, and policy-level changes that dramatically transform their lives, the film’s subjects demonstrate the human impulse to sustain life. For Pluvinage, resilience is not only about healing, but rather represents a methodology for creating a life. People alter their environments, personal appearances, or behaviors, not merely to adapt and survive, but to thrive and delight in life, despite its obstacles.
A public reception supported by the French Consulate for the Midwest, featuring both artists will take place on Sunday, January 14 from 2-5pm. More events & info located at the bottom of the page.
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