Julia Abraham is a practising artist, curator and researcher, currently residing in the UK. Working as an interdisciplinary artist, Julia’s practice challenges canonical art histories in favour of conceptualising revisionist accounts, in relation to migration, dislocation, geo-politics, racial and sexual differences, represented individually and collectively in contemporary visual cultures.
Dance on the Land, series of 5. Documentation of performance. 2009
“By inserting myself into specific landscapes and environments I am able to trace the site with my body and re-create past experiences. This area of of my work is inherently important to the full comprehension of issues regarding body-memory and testing theories of displacement. I am interested in documenting how certain sensory or physical responses are affected through dislocation of the self.”
- Julia Abraham
“I understand the landscape to be a dominant aspect in the reconnection of lost memory; a place where if one pays close enough attention, may be able to regain the memories the land has graciously stored. I believe that the landscape inherently swallows the experiences which are first enacted within it. Due to the innate breakdown of human memory, I search for ways to recapture the memories that the land has perhaps recorded. My thesis is unified by a continual attempt to extract the mnemonic significance from the land through a series of engagements and interventions.
This engagement with the land takes the form of a performance where I go to a specific location that symbolizes memory and present a proposition through a bodily engagement to pull out the entrenched memories from within it. By revisiting aspects of the memory that are still present in my mind and re-immersing myself in a sensory remembrance, I experience a merging and reconnection of the empty areas. The performance takes the form of a dance, where as I perform the memory, the land becomes my relational partner. The land dually takes on the position of spectator and participant, as I attempt to lure my memories from it. The work will exist as photographic documentation of my performance in the landscape.”
- Julia Abraham
Julia graduated University of Toronto in 2009, Honours B.A. (with Distinction) Fine Art History and Visual Studies, St. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Birmingham specialising in contemporary art historical research.
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