“One must understand that it is impossible to reduce anyone, no matter who, to a truth he would not have generated on his own. That is, within the opacity of his time and place.” — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997)

PENUMBRA is a mediated sculpture which translates individual voices contributed by collaborators from migrant communities into a choral spatial embodiment. The eclipsed view exposes the liminality between the hard edges of shadow and the full exposure of illumination where the porosity of institutional vessels gives way to relation. Using an animation singular and unique to each participant, the sculpture facilitates a platform for presence through opacity.

PENUMBRA was part of knowledges, a group exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art consisting of artists whose practices are rooted in research. Danielle Roney was included to continue her decades-long advocacy of migrant human rights and the impact of technology on a mechanized cultural identity.

knowledges
Spencer Museum of Art
Lawrence, Kansas
August 24, 2019 – January 5, 2020