Living Canvas at IMMA ‘laying fire’ by Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor

laying fire (2023)

HD video, colour, sound; 16:23 minutes

Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor, laying fire (2023). Film still courtesy the artist.

Please note: The film contains language that some viewers may feel is unsuitable for young children.

laying fire by Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor is an experimental memory work on intimacy. Using real life portraits of queer Black Norwegian femmes, the film explores revolutionary ways of being in partnership with our beloveds and ourselves. The film questions societal expectations of gender and sexuality and how to interrogate these expectations through a queer Black lens.

The initiative to archive narratives about queer Afro-Norwegian in the Nordics arose from questions about the politics of intimacy. Queer intimacy in all its forms is politicised in many societies around the world, from over 200 anti-LGBT bills filed in the United States in 2022 to more than 60 countries across the globe with national laws criminalising same sex relations. Images of queer Black intimacy are rarely shown in a positive, stable and affirming light, where stories from these intersecting communities are rarely amplified in mainstream media. laying fire proposes a rebuke to the policing and erasure of queer Black intimacy.