Film
Communion
by Joy Guidry & Calethia DeConto
Mail Art
Miss Abyss
about the art
Communion brings together the work of 3 artists who create art that uplifts their communities and imagines a future shaped by bliss, gratitude, and healing. It features a sound film by Joy Guidry and Calethia DeConto with mail art by Amaryllis R. Flowers.
Joy and Calethia’s sound film, Communion, weaves a tapestry of Joy performing music from their album, Amen, with experimental filmwork by Calethia. In Joy’s words, Amen is about “focusing on what healing feels like to me.” Joy expresses this through their powerful poetry, electronic soundscapes, and lyrical bassoon playing. Under Calethia’s direction, the film creates a hyper-reality around Joy’s performance which is interspersed with Calethia’s experimental film-work from a lone figure standing on the white sands in New Mexico to slow motion sparkling highlights on the sea.
Amaryllis’ mail art, Miss Abyss, features her intricate world-building with fantasy, craft, and oversaturated girl-like colors. Her lush femme cosmologies are a rebellion that, in her words, “aim[s] to queer spiritual implications of purity, using symbols that center the devastating mess and mystery of being human” and creates “a visual language paying attention to those living in the spaces between categories, and documenting the trouble and pleasure we find there.”