Alma

Keisha Scarville's series Alma/Mama's Clothes began in the wake of her mother's death in 2015. She turned to her mother's clothes—remarkable transmitters of memory with their unique capacity to store the shape and scent of the wearer as well as transport us back to the specifics of time and place—using them as the material and inspiration for her photographs.

 

Deftly deploying high-contrast grayscale and vivid color, Scarville moves the viewer between geographies and temporalities, creating a visual language of longing that frees itself from the boundaries of linear narrative. To conjure her mother's presence, Scarville drew inspiration from late 19th century spirit photography and the Yoruba tradition of Egungun, a manifestation and honoring of ancestors. Rather than directly recreating Alma's biography, Scarville's performative self-portraits and sculptural bundles evoke the density and complexity of a parent-child relationship and its ongoing nature, one that continues long after a parent has passed.

 

Scarville approaches photography as an archival practice that reimagines time, opening possibilities where the past and present converge and point towards imagined futures. Her photographs do not simply document loss; they conjure presence, allowing the spirit of what has gone to manifest in new and revelatory forms. Blending and confusing the distinctions between still-life, self-portraiture, and landscape photography, Scarville's enigmatic and poetic works transform personal loss into visual poetry, creating a bridge between memory and materiality.

Born 1975 in New York, United States.
Lives and works in New York, United States.

 

Keisha Scarville weaves together themes dealing with loss, latencies and the elusive body. Her work has been widely exhibited, including the International Center of Photography, Studio Museum of Harlem, Huxley-Parlour in London, ICA Philadelphia, Contact Gallery in Toronto, The Caribbean Cultural Center, Lightwork, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Higher Pictures.

 

Recent group exhibitions include The Rose (Lumber Room, Portland, 2023); If I Had a Hammer (FotoFest Biennial, Houston, 2022); and All of Them Witches (Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, 2020). Her work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the George Eastman House, Denver Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

 

Her first book, lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound, was published by Mack Books.