Leila Weefur

Between Beauty & Horror

Leila Weefur’s two-channel video installation Between Beauty & Horror focuses on the sensorial and somatic experiences that give Blackness a distinct and inherently racialized materiality. The narrative structure of Between Beauty & Horror operates on dream logic; interspersed among the dream sequences of the video are moments that fluidly shift between violence, playfulness, tenderness, and of course, beauty and horror. Weefur’s work poses many questions about the Black experience, but it offers no easy answers. 

Each step of the narration begins with “All I can remember,” as “all” becomes more and more, morphing from happy memory into nightmare. A voiceover describes a memory of a group of five friends standing in a circle, and later, the same voice says they’re sitting. The friends are laughing, but then they’re not. They point finger guns at one another, and one friend’s finger turns into an actual gun. In the video, the blackberry becomes a metaphor of black existence and structural racism. Blackberries are an invasive species that survive in whatever environment—hostile or friendly— while being desired for its deep color and sweet taste The fruit is a symbol of the Black figure and the racist stereotypes that shape perceptions of Blackness and are absorbed subconsciously. The video describes tactility and taste with a variety of fabric textures (lace, thick cotton, knit balaclavas) and dripping fruit juice (always blackberries). The feeling of unease that permeates the video is heightened by its score, a collaboration between Weefur and KYN (electronic music duo Yari Bundy and Josh Casey). Exploring duality as an intrinsic part of the Black experience, Weefur’s work posits abjection, violence, and eroticism as the ingredients that make up the “between”.