Kevin Everson
Biography
From http://people.virginia.edu/~ke5d/index.htm
"My films and artwork are about responding to daily materials, conditions, tasks and gestures of people of African descent. These materials, systems, tasks and gestures are repositioned through a variety of mediums such as photography, film, sculpture, artist books and paintings. The results usually have a formal reference to art history and resemble objects or images seen in working class culture. This strategy invites the work to be interpreted by a variety of communities. Over the past ten years I have completed two feature films and over twenty-five short 16mm, 35mm and digital films about the working class culture of Black Americans and other people of African descent.
Over the past twelve years I have completed three feature films and almost fifty short 16mm, 35mm and digital films about the working class culture of Black Americans and other people of African descent. My films focus on conditions, tasks, gestures, and materials in these communities. The films consist of the relentlessness of everyday life, as well as its beauty, and have a naturalistic, almost documentary-like texture.
"Recently I have been responding to the performance of peoples of African descent in old film footage as if it were theater. Either by reenacting the films or just using the footage, I am attempting to create an archive of these performances."
Kevin Everson explores the working class culture of Black Americans by capturing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of daily life. Everson often incorporates footage of family and friends in his work, as well as found media including sports clips, photographs, and news reports. He then reinterprets the images to generate new meaning which allow him to examine life in the Middle-American Black home.
Everson currently teaches at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. The filmmaker has made over 20 short 16 mm, 35mm, and digital films. Everson has shown his films in such prestigious institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York CIty, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, among others.
Eversons work was exhibited during Howling at the Edge of a Renaissance (1998) at SPACES.
