All The Space You Cannot See is a film and companion piece about my mother, who is deceased. It is an attempt to see her face and hear her voice, through the shared and unheard remembrances of 5 of her sisters and her mother, my grandmother. This work also explores Epistemological location, as it relates to Black cultural practices of gathering, specifically in and around the Kitchen. This exploration observes the ways in which space and location coalesce to form containers for our memories— how these memories become site specific and tied to the personal geographies that make up the architecture/texture of a space. Anchored in a Black visual politic and Black feminist theory, it is gesture towards rendering a new composite image of my mother. This is a Black, oralgraphical-documentry, that draws upon Black Collective Memory, refusal, survivance, emotional architecture, sites of memory, faith, spirituality, grief, absence and love.
Jeary Payne (He/him) is a multi disciplinarian artist, telling stories and creating art across mediums. Based in Brooklyn, NY by way of Phoenix Arizona. He currently serves as an associate educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where he oversees the museum’s Teen Programs. As an artist and educator he believes that nothing done without passion is ever done for long. He has been dedicated to exploring innovative ways to support and enhance the learning experience through the arts and education for young people . He received a bachelors of Interdisciplinary Studies, focusing on music and business from Arizona State University (Class of 2010).
As a photographer, he is interested in documenting scenes that capture the nuance, micro moments of Black life and experiences of real people. Through the program, he’s interested in exploring Black collective memory, the intricate dynamics of being a transplant in a gentrifying Brooklyn as it relates to building community as well archiving and mapping his own history by discovering who his late mother was through the stories and recollections of those who knew her well.