These Boots Were Made For Walking, a sculptural performance by artist Anina Major, tells a tale of fractured cultural connections across the Black diaspora, by adopting body movement as an expression of agency and a form of problem solving, to comprehend the traces of complex histories inherited. Through performance Major embraces ruin as a signifier of temporal in-between-ness by walking and prancing upon a bed of crushed conch and oyster shells and ceramic mammies shards. Shards composed from slip-casted mass-produced, racially charged ceramic souvenirs and fragments of the artist's woven works, serve as present-day ostracons. Their physicality creates an unconventional, land-based monument that memorializes the fragility of lost histories and materializes the delicate tension between destruction and perseverance. By stomping the earth, Major rejects colonial systems of value and reclaims the remnants of suppressed narratives.

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This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Unruly Navigations, on view at MoAD from March 27th-September 1st.

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Anina Major (she/her) is a visual artist from the Bahamas. Her decision to establish a home contrary to the location in which she was born and raised motivates her to investigate the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia and identity. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including the 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, the Lighton International Artists Exchange Program (LIAEP) Award, and the EKWC center of excellence for ceramics international artist-in-residency. Her work has been exhibited in the Bahamas, across the United States, and Europe and featured in permanent collections that include the National Gallery of the Bahamas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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Her work has received favorable mentions in Hyperallergic along with a multi-spread feature in Sculpture Magazine. Recent group exhibitions include “Underneath Everything: Humility and Grandeur in Contemporary Ceramics” a traveling exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center and the Grand Rapids Art Museum and “The Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art from the Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

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