Aliyah Winter

originally published in:
The Tomorrow People catalogue essay
2017

The Tomorrow People
Curated by Christina Barton, Stephen Cleland and Simon Gennard
22 July – 1 October 2017

A figure appears on each screen, lip syncing to two songs; Danny Boy and Eli Jenkins Prayer. She appears in a form of abstracted drag, wearing other-worldly makeup and decorations on her face, while her collarbones and neck remain bare. In one, her face is coated in gold leaf and her black hat forms two haloes - one of lace edging, and one a hovering silver buckle. In the other, she wears white face paint with flowers over her forehead, and, like a sonnet, a rose on each cheek.

These almost ritualistic details suggest an elaborate performance - but of what remains elusive. Individual features become muted and mask-like through the make-up. This distancing is increased by her limited facial movements; only her mouth opens and her head just barely tilts from time to time. Here is a conspicuously different reimagining of the body. The ethereal makeup and ornaments act to deflect the gaze from the individual herself. The model is transformed from an individual into a tool through which the viewer experiences overlaid sound and story.

A softly lilting tenor sings. The voice belongs to Aliyah’s grandfather, Ieuan Evans who, although physically absent, occupies the central presence in these works. Danny Boy has a piano accompaniment of her grandmother, Nancy Evans (nee Dempsey). We hear other sounds too - chairs creaking, a soft sigh. These unintended inclusions transfer us into another temporality - perhaps into the comfort of a lounge in which it was recorded, as an intimate musical collaboration between a couple. The other song, Eli Jenkins Prayer, is a public performance, perhaps from when he sang at the Royal Albert Hall with the New Zealand National Male choir.

Recorded on a vhs, the videos are overlaid with the initial audio recordings from cassette tapes. This archival quality of the work, the graininess of the footage, and the obsolete technology combine to create a tactility to the work. The layered technologies mark the separation of time between the Aliyah and her grandfather, yet the technology also enables the connection here.

Lyrically, both songs are calls, but without a response. Danny Boy, an Irish ballad expresses a grief for a loved one, and has been used as a funeral song. The other is a call to God, a prayer sung by the Reverend Jenkins in the play Under Milk Wood. The religious usage by each denotes a grieving and a longing, layered with nostalgia and loss.

The sound from the original recordings suggest a semblance of continual existence. The lower register of Ieuan’s voice aligns with Aliyah’s lips, note by note. In drag, Aliyah presents as an atemporal figure, and uses light positioning and decontextualized ornamentation to create an ambiguity regarding gender. While her elegant features replicate the soft motions of her grandfather’s mouth, no sound from her own lips are emitted.

For the non-cisgender individual there is a very specific gendered relationship that one has with their voice. Changes in vocal tone and pitch are difficult to control, yet have a complex component in one’s gender presentation, as well as in how congruent someone feels it is with their own gender identity. While the viewer may sense the disjunction between the unseen voice and the seen body, they may not initially realise they come from two individuals. On a personal level, this is also a subversive act; by lip-syncing to the singing of her grandfather, Aliyah chooses to: “put the voice through my queer body, transforming it somehow, without fully knowing the outcome of the performance”.