a prayer with the Clearing

“You got to love it. This is flesh i’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved.” – Toni Morrison

a prayer with the Clearing is an experimental moving image meditation, offering a window into ceremony and lovemaking with Black ecology, time, and space. As visual collage, this piece is part of a series of current practices with Black land/space/futures and possibilities; listening and being with ancestral calling. a prayer with the Clearing, calls forth multilayered offerings of devotion and freedom with/in and through portals of remembering.

Land acknowledgement: Bulbancha, Chitimacha + Choctaw territory, Okwata and “Big River/Father of Waters” – Also called and referred to as New Orleans, LA, Lake Pontchartrain + Mississippi River

Project by

paris cyan cian

paris “cyan” cian is a movement architect working with and through various interdisciplinary forms of dance, drawing, film, photography, and sound. Rooted in New Orleans, cyan’s creative work crosses at the intersections of Black girlhood futurity, ecology, and ritual/offerings, centering re-memory and durational play through Black (queer) feminist methodologies. cyan is committed to embodied practices of cosmic love and worldmaking. Performance exhibitions/installations, practices, and organizing include Merde Project Artist, Eleanor D. Wilson Museum Virginia, Radical XChange, Saint Heron, BlackGirlGeniusWeek/SOLHOT, No)one. Art House LA, and Dancing Grounds. cyan cian received her BFA/BA in Dance with a concentration in social justice, gender women’s studies from Hollins University (2018) and is a current candidate in the Masters of Fine Arts in Choreography program at Roehampton University, London, U.K (2021).

MFA Choreography

Year of Study: 1

Other Collaborators

creative production + direction, text, editing, choreography by cyan cian voice + text, cyan + Florence Young produced by merde project camera assistant by Arielle sereia sound design by cyan + lovenloops sound production by lovenloops