TREMAINE EMORY’S BEAUTY OF BECOMING FILM TRANSCRIPT

TREMAINE EMORY: My name is Tremaine Emory. Inspired by Kara Walker’s, I built out iconography that terms maybe hurtful symbols, like cotton, gave them not even new meaning, the true meaning. I did a documentary on my grandmothers, talking to them about the first time they picked cotton, this is all post-slavery, and just their lives as Black women, growing up, raising kids, raising grandkids, raising great grandkids in a small town called Harlem, Georgia. What Black people go through, what Black women go through, that’s the importance to tell their story, one of the most important stories on the human condition. To have them be the stars of it, it’s just emotional ’cause my nana, Evelyn Sanders, she died like two weeks ago, and the cotton wreath, it’s like a talisman for Black people. Cotton wreath is a call to return back to what built this country. We built this country while we were brought here, what that put us through, what we’re still going through. That’s just one of the ways I use iconography to bring social awareness to systematic racism, paying homage to what Black people have been through, and we’re still here. So that’s how I use iconography. But we do need more stories ’cause there’s a lotta people, a lotta women, lotta people of color, a lot of subjugated people, all colors, and identities don’t have their stories told.