Naomieh Jovin

Lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Artist statement

At the center of my work is the quest for understanding family trauma, inheritance, and transformation. I seek out pathways in my artistic practice for unlearning, storytelling, and transference of power and trauma within family. These practices allow me to expand my family’s narrative beyond single perspectives, from gatekeepers of information within my family to xenophobic narratives of Haitian people. How does photographing my friends as they interact and perform in the nude help to develop a trusting and healing relationship with the body? How is that experience transformative in giving me agency and power? This process allows me to perform a safety net that I would like to experience more often in intimate dynamics. I consider healing as a personal, social, and spiritual process in the face of the negativity attributed to the African Diaspora, and in my case, in my familial land of Haiti. I began my work as an artist in order to re-imagine and understand the body as a form outside of shame. When people experience trauma, they form a different relationship with the body. They no longer perceive their bodies as functional spaces. These experiences reshape the perspectives of the body, rendering it as useless. Instead, the body is seen as something shameful, powerless, something that needs to be hidden or concealed. Through my photographic series The Body Project, I attempt to heal the body from traumas related to sexual violence and negative racialized perceptions. The...

Artwork