Artists in attendance
In person & online
Microscope is very pleased to present a screening of video works by New York-based artists DaeQuan Alexander Collier and by Corinne Spencer as part of our emerging artist series YES. The screening will take place both in person and online, with a Q&A with the artists following the screening.
The uplifting works on the program — four by each artist, made between 2016 and 2024 — show us that the darkness of past and present struggles does not preclude the possibility of joy, beauty, and healing: if they are not present now, one can find the way to attain them.
In crisp, hypnotic video sequences often populated by slow movements of choreographed bodies, Spencer’s videos often reimagines the “relationship between the black feminine body and the land,” such as in Splendor and Like Muscle to the Bone. Through lush milk baths, HUNGER addresses personal and social rebirth, again steering away from trauma and heading towards self-recovery and newly found harmonies.
In multifaceted videos often alternating between autobiography and fiction, Collier delves into African Americans’ chance at happiness at times of oppression and civil unrest, centered on the experience of Black boyhood, and fantasizing on a worry-free existence such as that of a butterfly (in “WHAT IF BLACK BOYS WERE BUTTERFLIES?”). In Collier’s “a place in the sun,” a jigsaw made of fragments of both imagined and real life — involving many moving image formats from both personal and appropriated footage — eventually fall into place, with the final proposition: “do the things that make you happy.”
Collier and Spencer will be available for a Q&A following the screening.
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DaeQuan Alexander Collier is a Bronx-born filmmaker and writer whose work documents, responds, and reimagines the complexities of the human experience. His work integrates physical and digital technologies that unlock new forms of exploration and interaction across mediums. He received a BFA in Film and Television Arts from the New York University (2018) and an MFA in Screenwriting from Emerson College (2021) and his work has been exhibited both domestically and internationally. Through his practice, Collier seeks to push the boundaries of artistic expression to foster meaningful dialogue and community.
Corinne Spencer is a Brooklyn based artist working at the intersection of video, photography, and installation. She received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2010 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014. Her work has been performed and exhibited throughout the US, including a 2015 city-commissioned installation of her ongoing video work, HUNGER in Boston, MA, an exhibition with Samson Projects at NADA NY (New York, NY, 2016), Root Shock, a three person exhibition at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA, 2019), a two person show, Shanna Maurizi & Corinne Spencer, at La MaMa, La Galleria (New York, NY, 2019), and a solo exhibition, Splendor, at the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY, 2022) among others. Spencer is the recipient of several grants, awards, and fellowships including the Franklin Furnace Fund Award, two Foundation for Contemporary Arts grants, the MacDowell Fellowship, the Constance Saltonstall Fellowship, and an ongoing art residency with the Meerkat Media Collective. Spencer was a 2023/24 artist-in-residence with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency. Spencer’s film, HUNGER, exploring the relationship between Black women and spiritual awakening, had its theatrical premiere at Brooklyn Academy of Music as a part of BAM 2024.