Mumblin’s
Mumblin’s is an installation that includes six bird formations, several large female portraits and a soundtrack of African Americans recalling personal stories of migration and life during the civil rights movement, as well as their perspective of what social justice means to them. Ms. Bonnie Newman Davis, Journalist and Co-Collaborator conducted interviews with seven individuals and Mr. Winston, Sound Engineer and Graphic Designer, took excerpts from these recorded conversations and added bird chattering and music to create a soundtrack as a backdrop for the bird formation sculptures. The overlay of birds chirping is a metaphor for human communications. perhaps to break down walls to sensitize people to listen to stories marginalized communities.
Several of the bird formations and clusters are displayed on side tables from the turn of the 20th century to reflect beauty, peace, a harmony of being, and home. In bell hooks’s book titled, belonging, (1) she refers to a visit to an art gallery in San Francisco, where she saw rooms arranged by Buddhist monk Chögyam Trungpa. (2) He reminded hooks to look carefully at the objects in the gallery. Trungpa states, “Objects are not without spirits. As living things, they touch us in unimagined ways.” Thompson installs her work on repurposed tables specifically for this reason, in that they recall memory of home, whether that be her mother’s, grandmother’s or a close auntie’s house. Thompson’s bird formations symbolize and carry messages of intimacy, liberation, resilience, loss, restorative, transcendental, and rebalancing the world. Birds migrate to places searching for greater resources for food, warmer climates, and breeding to populate their species. The great migration of African Americans moved from the deep south to northern cities for better resources, such as job opportunities, education, and home security. However, for Black people were pushed to leave their homes because of the constant threat of Jim Crow Laws (3) and left seeking better living conditions in northern cities. The excerpts from the interviewees’ personal stories serve as examples to these migration patterns.
Bird Formations
Flocking
