Inspired by the hush harbor, the sukkah, and earthfast structures that freed Black folks built post-emancipation, Openings are abstract representations of various fugitive cartographies. Each opening is a meditation on sites and spaces, both physical and imagined, of the night sky, the woods, the horizon, the waterways, the truckpatch, the kitchen, and more.
During slavery and post-emancipation, Black folks created spaces of refuge, revival, and return. Spaces both interior and wild, both cosmic, and familiar. Spaces of hiding and harboring, spaces of healing and sustenance, and spaces of expression and story. Using natural materials, discarded and repurposed scraps, Openings are a meditations on fugitive space-making.
Under the night, 2022
After long days of laboring on tobacco farms, enslaved people in the Chesapeake region tended to their personal and familial needs at night. Foraging, fishing, preparing food, washing clothes, caring for children, tending to the truck patch, having secret dance parties and spiritual gatherings, were all practices of collective care that happened under the night sky.
Loopholes of Retreat, 2022
Loophole of retreat is a phrase used by Harriet Jacobs to refer to her hiding place, a small crawl space above her grandmother's cabin where she hid for 7 years after escaping her enslaver. She speaks of this space as one of both confinement and freedom. While here enslaver searched far and wide for her, she hid herself away, on the plantation.
Harriet's Doors, 2021
Depicting a dream of Harriet Tubman and the dimensions of the crawlspace that Harriet Jacobs hid within, Harriet's Doors honor the passageways of freedom-seeking Black women.
Harriet Tubman recalled a dream where she proclaimed, "my people are free". This door appeared in a dream that the artist had. It is constructed with watermelon seeds, raffia, and parchment paper from cooking biscuits. Harriet Tubman freed hundreds of people through her work as an organizer, a Union spy, and as a caregiver.
Harriet Jacobs' slave narrative, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was an influential abolitionist text. In it, she describes the crawlspace where she hid for 7 years. It was 3ft high, and 7x9feet wide. These numerical dimensions are referenced in the rectangles on this door.
Small fires and after, 2022
Petit marronage is a practice where Black people escaped to the woods temporarily, stealing away their time and labor. The artist uses the remnants of daily rituals and found objects from nature-walks to archive a contemporary practice of refuge and revival. Small micropaintings on each door represent the spaces we carve out of scarred landscapes.
Of stars and seeds, 2021
A reflection on undergrounds and the night time. For fugitives; constellations, plants and waterways provided resources for navigation, assembly, hiding, nourishment, defense, and spiritual protection. Many Black people nourished a connection to the ground, the sky, and the in-between. Oyster shells represent ancestral presence and divine guidance.
Provision, 2021
Enslaved Black women often left food and other provisions in the woods for fugitives and maroons.
This offering is one of many that Valoris constructs in sites that hold connections to fugitive histories. Valoris often uses corn husks, tobacco, seeds, herbs, and baskets to create sacred offerings of gratitude for the land, people and spirits that support collective liberation.
Uncover/Recover, 2022
This tryptic reimagines the truck patch as a fugitive cartography, and the act of food cultivation as one of both excavation, recovery and transformation.
The truckpatch was a small plot or garden outside of slave quarters where enslaved people could cultivate food and herbs for personal use. It was a sacred ground. In the Chesapeake region, Black people grew basil, sage, sweet potatoes, corn, and more. Over 40% of the enslaved diet came from foods that enslaved people grew, foraged or hunted for themselves. Because of the time-consuming nature of tobacco production, enslaved people often tended to their truckpatch at night under the light of the moon.
Little dippers, 2021
The Little Dipper constellation is a celestial shape of a spoon-like utensil used to carry liquid. Spoons are a metaphor for care, nourishment, and know-how.
The intersection of spoon and star reminds us of the importance of both vision and practice.
The Little Dipper constellation contains the Polaris, commonly known as the North Star. Fugitives used this constellation to navigate North. The sun, moss, moon, tides, and bird-calls were also natural phenomenon that could be used to discern time and direction as self-liberating ancestors navigated swamps, forests, mountains, and waterways.
A Spot in the Sun, 2021
A Spot in the Sun refers to one of the cosmic visions that Nat Turner understood as a call to armed resistance against slavery. In 1831, Nat Turner led an armed rebellion that sent shockwaves throughout the region.
A spot in the sun refers to an eclipse that Nat Turner saw, months before planning the rebellion. Nat Turner paid special attention to signs and visions from nature. For the artist, "a spot in the sun" has double meanings. It represents the hypocrisy of slavery, and also the promise of Black liberation.
"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns." -Octavia Butler
Where the river meets the sea, 2022
Oyster shells were used by Black people to honor the dead in cemeteries and burial sites. The shell was a symbol of the waters and the promise of return.
Valoris creates mobiles and rainmakers out of natural materials as a way to explore the relationship between flight and sound.
The cloth represents the earth-based spiritual practices that enslaved people used for healing, resistance and spiritual protection.
Black Refugees + Altared Code, 2023
Each blue micro-painting encodes elements of the stories of self--liberating ancestors. Through various practices, Black refugees initiated Underground Railroad organizing, created free Black communities and systems of mutual care. Participating in political and armed resistance, they turned the tides of the Civil War, eventually leading to the Emancipation Proclamation.
The sun in Black Refugees is positioned at dawn, a nod to Dawn Settlement in Canada, a free Black community founded by Josiah Henson, who liberated himself and 118 other people from enslavement. Josiah Henson was enslaved in Montgomery County, MD, and his story is the basis of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a best-selling abolitionist book.
Blue Mash, located in Gaithersburg, MD, was a marshland during slavery. It was a space where self-liberating Black people escaped to and found refuge. Histories of marronage exist throughout the diaspora. After emancipation, the Blue Mash area was stewarded by a Free Black Town named Zion.
Through a collaborative process, ReMemories of Blue Mash invited a group of Black organizers and cultural workers to be in creative study and reflection around these histories. A beautiful ritual emerged that took place at Blue Mash and honored legacies of collective care and resistance.
Director: Jessica Valoris, Cinematographer: Katiana Weems, Sonic Mastermind: Asha Santee
Artists: Ahmane' Glover, Asha Santee, Ashley Valoris, Deondre Rice, Derrick Brown, Dion Harrison, Iyanu Bishop, Je'Kendria Trahan, Kenneth Carroll, Camille Douglass, Camryn Douglass, Laquesha Barnes, Monisade Fabunmi, Neida Mbuia-Joao, Richael Faithful, Lyric Miller, Vee Msanii, Brittney Washington, Carre Adams, Katie Petit, Mazaré Rogers, Ọmọlará Williams McCallister.
Special thanks to Alternate ROOTS, Tour de Force, Carol Valoris, Ashley Valoris, Surafel Tesfaye, Carre Adams, and Anthony Cohen.
Resource:
-Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons by Sylviane Diouf
-Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South by Ira Berlin
“...If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” -Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Escape was sometimes referred to as "slave flight"; not only by enslavers, but also in Black American folktales and oral traditions. In her book, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison uses the motif of flying Africans that is common in Black diasporic folklore.
In several WPA interviews, formerly enslaved people recounted having heard of enslaved Africans who could fly, and did. They flew away, off the plantation, and back home to Africa.
In the published story, The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton, a root doctor sings a special song to enslaved people working the fields. The song reminds them of their powers, and they fly away home.
In other versions of the story, it is noted that when Black people took to the skies, their hoes were left still working the ground.
Enslaved people used the hoe to work the fields, and also to tend to their own gardens, called a "truck patch". In the Chesapeake Region, enslaved people often cultivated their truckpatch by moonlight, and supplemented the little food they were allotted by gardening, foraging, and fishing.
Escaping enslavement often necessitated the solidarity of other enslaved people, Free Blacks, and abolitionist White allies. It often took multiple attempts. Many were not able to escape and found other means to resist and practice agency over their bodies and their time. They practiced fugitivity by innovating ways to subvert the plantation system through truancy, secret gatherings, harboring fugitives, and creating networks of solidarity and care.
The dancefloor at the base of the sculpture is inspired by the ways that secret dance gatherings were a space of refuge, refusal and revival. At the risk of severe punishment Black communities coordinated secret dance parties in the woods, and used dance as a way of reclaiming their bodies, time, movement, and personal agency. Sites of Black gathering and assembly were criminalized and policed for fear of Black people organizing themselves to take collective action against their oppressors.
Sources:
-Without The Smallest Provocation by Anthony Cohen and Steve Gillick
-The dancefloor is a fugitive sanctuary by Jessica Valoris
“In Black music, you don’t practice to become more fluent. You practice in order to become less fluent. If what we mean by fluency is a certain kind of normativity.” -Fred Moten
“Escape is an activity, not an achievement.” -Fred Moten
Through embodied study and creative practice, Valoris hones in on fugitive practices such as knowing the water's ways, fixin' a plate, footwork, and grapevines. Small pictographs encoded into this blueprint represent various practices that Black folks used to escape and subvert the plantation system.
Today, fugitive practice is echoed in the ways we move, make music, tell stories, do our hair, create family, cook, commune with the land, and beyond. Fixing a plate is a fugitive practice where enslaved people would leave food and provisions in the woods for maroons. Cousining is another fugitive practice that refers to the ways Black people created kinship networks across bloodlines and geographies to evade capture. Extensive knowledge of the waterways, land, and night sky were ancestral technologies that supported self-liberating people in surviving the unknown. Big and small acts of sovereignty transpired both on and off the plantation by enslaved peoples, free Blacks and those in the in-between. Through truancy, secret gatherings, harboring, care, and networks of solidarity; our enslaved ancestors seeded a legacy of embodied liberatory praxis that carries on.
This process-based piece uses repetitive movements and markings to mirror themes of fugitive practice.
Source:
Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, and Michael Sawyer: "On Fugitive Aesthetics"
The text from these documents is ruptured and reconstructed into a love poem, dedicated to the person the original document targeted. The names of each self-liberating ancestor can be found on suspended pieces of burlap and calico. They include Anne Maria Weems, Rachel Davis, Caroline Landick, Jess and Josemin, Daniel Jackson, Peter Reader, Colin Brooks, Joe Carroll, Tobias Martin, and Davy. The Black poem references a slave insurrection that took place a few miles north of Rockville, MD in 1845. The ancestors involved in that armed resistance include Manuel Beall, Carbell, Jesse Dodson, Lemon, Ferdinand, James, Samuel, David, David, James, Mark, Jas. Gray, Lewis Key, and Henry. The insurrection was led by Mark Caesar and William Wheeler.
Fugitive slave ads were published in newspapers throughout the United States. They were posted by enslavers and Sheriffs departments, and advocated for the hunting of human beings.
The fugitive ads and newspaper clippings are transferred onto calico fabric and smeared with pokeberry ink. Pokeberry was used to make ink during the Civil War. It was also used in an anti-slavery action by Quaker abolitionist, Benjamin Lay to represent the blood on the hands of the enslavers.
Sources:
"It's a certain dance... the threat hasn't been eliminated... the terror, the violence, the threat of enclosure... and we continue to make and to create space because that's all we can do." -Saidiya Hartman
Ft. Monroe carries histories of enslavement and escape. It was the site where the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619. During the Civil War, Ft. Monroe was a Union fort where hundreds of enslaved Black folks escaped to, forming encampments that, at one point, numbered 900 people. It was there that the term “contraband” was first used to refer to Black folks who were claimed by the Union Army as property of war in order to evade the Fugitive Slave Laws. Contraband camps existed throughout the South and the Mid-Atlantic region.
The phrase that is repeated in the soundscape is an incantation derived from the quote above, and references a quotidian radicality. Quotidian radicality means the mundane, everyday practices that we engage to refuse systems of oppression, and return to our truth. It is a term used by scholar, Deborah Thomas, to describe the ways that Black women (who were more severely punished when attempting to escape, and who were more bound to enslavement because of gendered familial expectations) practiced liberatory ways of being through language, dance, foodways, gardening, child-rearing, and other seemingly small radical acts.
Through ritual-based movement, repetitive incantation and vocal distortion, A River Called Us references themes of quotidian radicality, refusal, disruption, refuge, and space-making.
Director and Sound Design: Jessica Valoris, Cinematographer: Carre Adams
Sources
-The Black Outdoors: Panel with Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten
-Quotidian Radicality referenced in panel discussion: Listening to Images
“Black people were the only people in the United States ever explicitly forbidden to become literate."
-Katie Cannon
Papers, petitions, and passes, were all tools that Black people employed to escape. The relationship between literacy (to read, to count) and legibility (to be read, to be gathered, to be understood)... is a code that Black people bend, break, and navigate in order to survive.
The practice of coding and decoding can be found throughout Valoris' work; in zines, pictographs, scribbles, numbers, text, and the use of paper, cloth, and found objects. Having created over 60 zines that contain hundreds of research doodles and reflections, Valoris uses doodling as a way of listening and decoding. These doodles become a code that obscures knowing, and deepens understanding by merging historical record with collective imaginings and personal reflections.
How do the fugitive practices of Black ancestors support contemporary movements for abolition, reparations, and earth- stewardship? What roadmaps and recipes are yet to be remembered or recollected? And how can embodied study and creative practice help us return to these wisdoms?
Passage/way/s is a meditation on the liberatory legacies of enslaved Black people and the various ways they imagined sovereignty through escape, refusal, collective care, and resistance.
Artist, Jessica Valoris, engages in an immersive and embodied study of Black fugitivity through zine-making, poetry, movement, and micro-paintings. At the intersection of study, reflection, and ancestral reverence-Passage/way/s reimagines sacred cartographies of the truck patch, night sky, and waterways.
