JANET E. DANDRIDGE
janet e. dandridge exhibited at PVAC in 2017, which included an interactive performance by her imagined character, Margaret Washington.
Follow These Rules: Periodic Table of Beauty is part of a series of vignettes highlighting this recurring character. The vignettes examine the quotidian experiences of Margaret, a young Black American woman, recently hired to work as a Beauty Consultant for The Colonial Group. When Margaret begins her job with The Colonial Group, she encounters a psychological struggle between the necessity of money and the necessity of self-care. Margaret struggles with surviving in a society designed to intentionally make her “ugly,” and the company that she currently works for emphasizes that “ugliness” by creating a program and products that support the detrimental societal norms promoting self-hate and unachievable beauty standards.
Follow These Rules: Periodic Table of Beauty, video, 8:38
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Amendment: Knell of a Nation (AKN) is an interactive installation originally performed in Washington, DC on August 27, 2020.
As the USA continued to suffer through countless deaths, rising unemployment, and exacerbated social injustices amplified by CV19, artists adapted to survive while honoring ‘stay at home’ policies. Simultaneously, protests and civil unrest gained momentum after the consecutive murders of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Americans by law enforcement officers. Phased re-opening was implemented in early summer, and janet chose to offer a cathartic performance inviting fellow citizens to create new social contracts based in justice to ‘guide us and our descendants’ out of the predatory and oppressive practices of the American experiment. Amendment: Knell of a Nation is janet’s first outdoor participatory Performance Art in Washington DC during the 2020 worldwide pandemic. It was performed at Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill near the Emancipation Memorial, which was erected in 1876.
It seems like we need a better way to co-exist, and creating new social contracts with fellow humans seems like a good start. I’m traveling to different states, cities, and towns in the United States to perform and install AKN, to create a comprehensive contract that will be shared with whoever is interested – I hope you are.
janet e. dandridge
Read about the performance of Amendment: Knell of a Nation (AKN) at this LINK.
AKN – snippet of performance on Capitol Hill, video, 2:46
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