Eaten By The Heart (Part 1)Eaten By The Heart is a video installation and documentary project conceived, produced and directed by film-maker and video artist, Zina Saro-Wiwa.
Commissioned by The Menil Collection, Houston and supported by the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC.org) for the Menil’s exhibition The Progress of Love, the piece explores intimacy, heartbreak and love performances among Africans and African Diasporans.
Eaten By The Heart forms part of Zina’s video performance practice which currently focuses on the mapping of emotional landscapes, its resulting performative behaviors and cross-cultural implications. She states: “So many of us cite with confidence that Love Is Universal. But the performance of love is, it seems, cultural. I wonder how the impact of how we choreograph and culturally organize the performance of love impacts what we feel inside and who we become.”
The documentary aspect of the Eaten By The Heart project will be expressed in three online films throughout the life of The Progress of Love exhibition. To experience the video installation – an hour-long series of kissing performances – visit the Menil Collection’s The Progress of Love exhibition on-site, in Houston.
We would love to hear from you. Wherever you are from. Please share comments and also your own stories of kissing, heartbreak, and where you think love lives in your own culture.
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Zina Saro-Wiwa
Nigerian-born Zina Saro-Wiwa grew up in Sussex, UK, and attended the University of Bristol, UK. She has been involved in journalism and media since her teen years, contributing to BBC television and radio and the New York Times. Saro-Wiwa has also created several documentaries, shorts, and experimental video works, including the recent This is My Africa, 2008, which has received numerous awards and premiered on HBO in 2010.
As a video artist, Saro-Wiwa often explores highly personal experiences, mapping their emotional facets and exploring the connection between documentary film and performance-based video. Her work seeks to make tangible the space between internal experience and outward performance and brings cross-cultural considerations to bear on these articulations. She often addresses the subject of “Africanness,” actively dismantling the assumptions that surround it. More recently, Saro-Wiwa has begun to work with food as a medium, engaging the cultural and ritualistic aspects of feasting.
Saro-Wiwa co-curated the exhibition Sharon Stone of Abuja, Location One Gallery, New York (2010), and is the founder of the multimedia company AfricaLab, dedicated to reimagining Africa. This is My Africa launched the Forex series at Stevenson, Cape Town (2009); and has been screened at the Newark Museum, NJ (2010); Brooklyn Museum, NY (2009); and October Gallery, London (2008). Other video works have been exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2011); and Stevenson (2011); and she has been a guest artist at Third Streaming, New York (2012). Her films have been shown at film festivals worldwide, including the Toronto International Film Festival (2012); Film Africa, London (2011); and the Africa in Motion Festival, Edinburgh (2010).