Times Square Arts Presents Allison Janae Hamilton's 'Wacissa' For April Midnight Moment

Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is pleased to present Wacissa by Allison Janae Hamilton for the month of April as part of the organization's signature Midnight Moment series in partnership with Marianne Boesky Gallery. Midnight Moment is the world's largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight.

In Wacissa (2019), Hamilton transports viewers through a series of rivers in her home region of North Florida. The rivers she navigates are all linked through the area's Slave Canal, so-called as it was built via slave labor in the 1850s to aid the transport of cotton through the Florida panhandle. Filming from her kayak, Hamilton placed the camera into the water, plunging viewers directly into the river. In the resulting video, the audience's senses are upended by the turbulent audiovisuals. Hamilton contrasts the untouched beauty of the underwater landscape with the remnants of the hurricane that devastated the region just a few months prior to filming. Debris can be seen floating in the water and fallen trees from the storm, inviting the viewer to consider the impact of climate change on communities within this landscape. Viewers in Times Square are invited to sync their phones to the underwater sounds of Wacissa via QR codes, which will be displayed throughout Father Duffy Square.

Allison Janae Hamilton was born in Kentucky, raised in Florida, and her maternal family's farm and homestead lies in the rural flatlands of western Tennessee. Her relationship with these locations forms the cornerstone of her artwork and her interest in landscape. Using plant matter, layered imagery, sounds, and animal remains, Hamilton fuses land-centered folklore and personal family narratives into haunting yet epic mythologies that address the social and political concerns of today's changing Southern terrain, including land loss, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. In the context of Times Square, Wacissa calls to mind many of these shared environmental concerns that also face New York as a coastal city and invites viewers to reflect on climate change in an urban landscape.

Coinciding with the presentation of Wacissa, Marianne Boesky Gallery will present A Romance of Paradise, Allison Janae Hamilton's inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery. For A Romance of Paradise, Hamilton will present new photographs, videos, and sculptural works that highlight the artist's ongoing exploration of interwoven themes such as environmental justice, folklore and mythologies, and the traditions of communities living in vulnerable landscapes within the rural American South. A Romance of Paradise will be on view March 27 - April 24, 2021 at the gallery's 507 West 24th Street location in New York.