Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, and experimental filmmaker whose work surveys ancestry, death and rebirth, and celebrity. At the core of her practice is a pursuit of visual and literary vocabularies that might best express the melancholic hope endemic to Black American social life. As Holiday navigates the depths of Black remembrance and loss, she sets her sights on the relationship between “the new” and “the archival.” She treats both entities as collectively improvising ensembles in which prose and poetry sit by turns comfortable and chaotic, next to images cribbed from Black artistic and private life.
Holiday’s God’s Suicide is a one-man play turned-film that takes Black male vulnerability as its central subject. Adapted from an essay by the artist, this deeply personal work examines the interplay between creative forces and decimating ones in societies infected with the myth of white supremacy. Drawing on archival research and personal history, God’s Suicide focuses on two figures: the author James Baldwin and the artist’s father, the soul musician Jimmy Holiday. As she explains, “Two Jimmys I love and who teach me their startling immortality daily deserve the space to discuss their demons as much as their gifts.” The film focuses on James Baldwin’s rarely acknowledged five suicide attempts. In it, an actor performs as Jimmy Baldwin while interacting with Jimmy himself, who is included through archival footage selected and edited by the artist.
In Made in L.A. 2020: a version, the artist’s work is present in two institutions, across Los Angeles. See Harmony Holiday’s work on view at The Huntington.
