"Movement is one with the world, not body/world but bodyworlding. We move not to populate space, not to extend it or embody it, but to create it"
Erin Manning
Global South Movements explores how women make space by moving and how women’s movements make worlds. The artists and bodyworlders who contribute to Global South Movements world the body as a source of knowledge, play, and power. Our work moves through the spiritual practices and aesthetics of Miami, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East in pursuit of personal stories of becoming.
Global South Movements resists the forces that would exploit women’s bodies. As performance studies scholar Diana Taylor points out: “While we usually think of performance as a body in action, we also have to recognize that many times performance functions within a system of subjugated power in which the body is one more product. The conquests, dictatorships, patriarchy, torture, capitalism, religion, globalization (etcetera) construct their own bodies.” The history of the form known in some circles as “belly dance” is shaped by these forces, subjugating women’s bodies as the object of Orientalist fantasies.
Global South Movements tells another story. Documenting a world made for and by women’s bodies, the artists gathered here create space for enchantment, transcendence, and intimacy. Looking inward, through women’s eyes, these artists invite us to see bodies shaped by the world, that reshape the world, and bodyworld a better future.
Tifany Madera
Miami, Florida 2023
