South Central Chapter ConferenceSpeakers

Nydia Blas

Friday, October 11, 2019 @ 11:00am, Louise Hopkins Underwood Center (511 Avenue J)

KEYNOTE LECTURE: Nydia Blas

Nydia Blas uses photography, collage, video, and books to address matters of sexuality, intimacy, and her lived experience as a girl, woman, and mother. Blas delicately weaves stories concerning circumstance, value, and power and uses her work to create a physical and allegorical space presented through a Black feminine lens. The result is an environment that is dependent upon the belief that in order to maintain resiliency, a magical outlook is necessary. In this space, props function as extensions of the body, costumes as markers of identity, and gestures/actions reveal the performance, celebration, discovery and confrontation involved in reclaiming one's body for their own exploration, discovery and understanding. In the work titled "The Girls who spun Gold," her goal was to create a space where an amazing group of girls she had developed interpersonal relationships with felt valued, supported, and that filled in the blanks where their formal education did not serve them. Eventually their bonds were reproduced visually in the photographs that they worked to make together.