‘A Portal’s Keeper’ light installation searches for personal liberation in movement
Artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon collaborated with local Syracuse artists to preview their new art installation. Moving color spectrums and imagery accompanied stories and emotions shared by the artists. Courtesy of Lightwork
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Projected on the back concrete wall of the Everson Museum of Art, a new light installation shone with shades of blue and purple, framed through the lens of Syracuse artists and natives.
“We learned about the people here, their experiences, and created something that is a part of this city,” artist Manuel Molina Martagon said.
In collaboration with the Everson, the Urban Video Project’s “The Portal’s Keeper” commissioned artists LaJuné McMillian and Martagon to create a light installation exploring hopes of personal liberation through speech and movement.
McMillian uses Unreal Engine, a video game software, to create color formations and auras that correspond to the participants’ movements, which are monitored by tracking devices on their bodies. The movements represent the participants’ emotions, which are shown through the colors and 3D scenes.
The installation will be on view outside the Everson from dusk to dawn every Thursday to Saturday through Dec. 20.
Leo Peter, a Syracuse University freshman and video game fan, said he resonated with the installation, which reminded him of how his brother builds video games.
“The way LaJuné and Manuel were able to create something so deep, yet so pretty, is mind-blowing. It felt like a video game,” Peter said.
At an artist talk on Nov. 6, McMillian opened with her own performing art piece, using the same technology as the exhibit.
The performance centered around growth as liberation, depicting the evolution of a girl moving through vines and light to become the woman she is today.
“If I am the portal’s keeper, why do I feel trapped?” McMillian said as she moved across the stage with a faceless child’s body between the trees.
She said her performance personified the larger idea of Black people using their voices to free themselves from the way society has approached Blackness for centuries.
“Raised in the trenches of anti-Blackness, taught to compromise myself, for to be unseen, untold, unknown, uncaptured is to be in the purest form by God,” McMillian said.
McMillian’s performance represented her evolution through liberation — from the image of a young Black child, victim of the systems historically subjugating her, to an adult who’s traveled through an inner journey to be and believe for themselves, McMillian said.
Following her performance, there was a preview of the art installation, featuring local creatives Kofi Antwi, Chloe Flores, Sofia Gutierrez and Martikah Williams.
The installation itself explores personal questions local creatives have in regard to their own freedom, McMillian said. Their movements weren’t prompted by McMillian or Martagon, but related to how the artists felt.
Antwi, a local writer, poet and professor at SUNY Cortland, spoke about his time working with youth in Syracuse. He said his work with children has helped him understand the artistic benefit of play and freedom, while also being able to liberate himself by educating youth on Black history that was left out of his childhood growing up in Staten Island.
“When I’m working with youth, I think, ‘How can we create this liberation, envision this liberation?’” Antwi said.
The visual effects correspond to movement, which relates to the emotion each artist is trying to convey. While viewers heard the artists’ stories, the moving imagery and color spectrums were entrancing and meaningful, Martagon said.
Afterwards, McMillian and Martagon sat down with Light Work UVP Program Director Anneka Herre, Gutierrez and Antwi to discuss the collaborative effort and being an artist today.
For Gutierrez, a former SU student who’s now working on her Master of Science in landscape architecture at SUNY ESF, the last year has helped her understand herself within the parameters of whiteness in education.
“Over the last year, I’ve considered the oppressive systems in place, liberation is about removing all those barriers,” Gutierrez said.
Martagon and McMillian have worked together in the past on a similar installation at the Brooklyn Public Library. Their collaboration represents two sides, with McMillian directing meaning, and Martagon interpreting the movement and emotion. The duo portrays Black liberation that transforms through their art, McMillian said.
“When I’m creating, working on a project like this, I understand that they are not my words, it might not be the way I necessarily think about things, but there is definitely a place where I can connect with their feelings,” Martagon said. “I am creating, and I am thinking about who I am creating for.”
