A still from Anastacia-Reneé's video “Alice in Parts,” part of a piercing show about the ruinous effects of white supremacy on the home and body, on view at Frye Art Museum. (Anastacia-Reneé)
The cancer of ‘keep going’ at the Frye Art Museum
“I do yoga. I read. I’m fine,” Alice Metropolis assures us from the black-and-white video screen, a bottle of liquor in hand. She goes to therapy. She’s working on being fine. She’s just gotta keep it going, keep it moving, stick to the plan. But the plan’s not working. Even in savasana, she doesn’t feel like she can rest.
Alice isn’t real: She’s a fictional character dreamed up by Seattle poet and artist Anastacia-Reneé. But Alice’s story, which Anastacia-Reneé tells through videos, wall poetry, installations of blood-spattered white laundry and piles of gifts inscribed with words like “home” and “sanctuary” rings true.
From Alice’s interior monologues emerges a portrait of her body as a house near-crumbling under the pressures of gentrification, redlining and white supremacy. But the rot, the cancer, is already in the walls. Wellness culture and kale and sleep and smoothies won’t patch this up, won’t stop the white liberals from invading her neighborhood, police from breaking down her door or cancer cells from taking over her body. In one video, Alice checks her breast for lumps, asking, “Cancer, are you still there?” She answers her own question: “Yep.”
If you go: Frye Art Museum is now open. Anastacia-Reneé: (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts runs through April 25.