KEVIN JEROME EVERSON

With a sense of place and historical research, Kevin Jerome Everson films combine scripted and documentary moments with rich elements of formalism. The subject matter is the gestures or tasks caused by certain conditions in the lives of working class African Americans and other people of African descent. The conditions are usually physical, social-economic circumstances or weather. Instead of standard realism he favors a strategy that abstracts everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures, in which archival footage is re-edited or re-staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives and historical observations intermesh with contemporary narratives. The films suggest the relentlessness of everyday life—along with its beauty—but also present oblique metaphors for art-making. His films, and his photographs and installations, have exhibited widely in the US and abroad, including Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam,  AFI Film Festival,  Athens International Film Festival,  Black Maria Film Festival,  Curta Cinema, European Media Arts Festival, Migrating Forms, New York Underground Film Festival,  Wavelengths, and more.