N. MASANI LANDFAIR

• Lake Allatoona 6900 Bells Ferry Rd, Woodstock, GA

leaf letter / undulate (we are Water / all Water connects)

Proposal
Masani Landfair proposes leaf letter / undulate (we are Water / all Water connects) (2020), a film/collage on paper/poem. For context, the artist states that Biscayne Bay has fed and
nurtured life in Southeastern Florida from the Archaic period of the Tequesta peoples through to present day Miamians. The water is one of Miami’s most vital natural resources and its most forsaken. Climate change and the focus on pleasing the population growth is creating the slow annihilation of life in the Bay and on land. The piece creates the connection of human/ nature waterways and the need for all people to be accountable in small to substantial daily actions to the land and waterways. The work, created with a Seagrape leaf she collected from Biscayne Bay, was submerged in the waters of Lake Allatoona in Cherokee
County, GA, to merge the memory of each body of water. The artist urges that “the human population supported by the Bay are vital in taking the necessary steps to be in tandem with true ecological rhythms. There is a space to start the work in healing when an understanding of the history and true movement of the waters is discerned. The water is ancient, and the earth recycles water more efficiently when the natural process is allowed.”

Biography
N. Masani Landfair grew up in the industrial community of South Chicago which contrasted with the environmental teachings and ways of her Southern grandparents. The views that came with her grandparents through the Great Migration have shaped her views of beauty and worth. The artist seeks to take materials considered undesirable and redefine the worth and meaning within them; using traditional collage and assemblage, she creates social commentary, dream landscapes, and spaces she consciously and subconsciously deals with every day. In 2020, she exhibited in “Third Coast Disrupted: Artist and Scientists on Climate” for The Ex.Change Project at the Glass Curtin Gallery of Columbia College, Chicago.