Performance | These Boots Were Made For Walking by Anina Major

These Boots Were Made For Walking, a sculptural performance by artist Anina Major, tells a tale of fractured cultural connections across the Black diaspora, by adopting body movement as an expression of agency and a form of problem solving, to comprehend the traces of complex histories inherited.
‍
Through performance, Major embraces ruin as a signifier of temporal in-between-ness by walking and prancing upon a bed of crushed conch, oyster shells, and ceramic mammies shards. Mass-produced shards composed from slip-casted racially charged ceramic souvenirs and fragments of the artist's woven works serve as present-day ostracons. Their physicality creates an unconventional, land-based monument that memorializes the fragility of lost histories and materializes the delicate tension between destruction and perseverance. By stomping the earth, Major rejects colonial systems of value and reclaims the remnants of suppressed narratives.
‍
‍This performance is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Unruly Navigations curated by
Key Jo Lee, on view at MoAD from March 27th-September 1st.
___

Anina Major (she/her) is a Bahamian visual artist exploring the relationship between self and place through craft. Her work intersects nostalgia and identity, reclaiming experiences and relocating displaced objects. Major holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and has received numerous awards and residencies, including the 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and the EKWC residency. Her work is exhibited in the Bahamas, the U.S., and Europe, and featured in permanent collections like the National Gallery of the Bahamas and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her work has been praised in Hyperallergic and Sculpture Magazine. Recent exhibitions include “Underneath Everything: Humility and Grandeur in Contemporary Ceramics” and “The Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art from the Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

#TheseBootsWereMadeForWalking #AninaMajor #MoAD #SculpturalPerformance #AfricanDiaspora #BlackArt