Spotlight on Darryl DeAngelo Terrell
An image from Darryl DeAngelo Terrell's A Way to Get Gone is the cover photo of Lab 1: Time. The project was recommended by Kweku Abimbola, who said: In a lot of the time traveler narratives we receive, the time traveler doesn't know why they're being thrust to different eras or sometimes they're not in control of it. But in Darryl’s project, they want to time travel. They'll take photos of themselves during sunset, right at a beach, or in a forest across different sorts of culturally significant spaces in the Black diaspora wearing something very iridescent. They will lower the exposure and they dance as they take these photos. So at the end you have this still image and then a burst of light. And they are the burst of light, like a portal being opened. That to me is just like what I want to do with my poetry. I want to have different portals where I can like tap into different veins of Black time. Below is a poem by Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, written in Senegal, where the cover image was created. The ocean as elsewhere The horizon line It’s infinite I’m sure it’s where you’ll find elsewhere matter fact I know it is beyond that horizon but, how do we get there? beyond infinite, where does infinite start and end? When dawn meets, the horizon blurs. Hiding elsewhere, night becomes important, even more so. I question, how we enter Do we fly there the African way, without the death of it all? Are we still gods Chilren do we still get our wings is the wind strong enough to carry us cradle us sway us there. Elsewhere being a place where water has never swallowed whole the bodies before us we swim unbothered our hair moves like the tide, we drink with our hands a never-ending drink. Elsewhere being where buddy blew his horn and his brains and kept blowing that horn to be heard with no insane asylum to meet him where he marches into the golden Senegalese sun till his hearts desire. Elsewhere, where the air is moist, and the wind is sweet, where it ruffles trees, making a song never played before.
Darryl DeAngelo Terrell is a Brooklyn-based Detroit-born artist primarily working within lens-based media, performance, and writing; they’re also a Curator, DJ, and Organizer. Darryl received their Bachelor of Fine Art from Wayne State University in 2015 and their Master of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Darryl works under the philosophy of FUBU (this shit is for us). They’re always thinking about how their work can aid a larger conversation about blackness and its many intersections. More text and images from A Way to Get Gone are available here.