Cromarty Harbour. Courtesy of the artist.
Ashanti Harris' ‘Virgo’ is a live monologue and sound performance drawing on Harris’ research into the life of Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Junor (1804–61), one of the four Guyanese women whose history in colonial Guyana and Scotland is recounted through the audio work 'History Haunts the Body' from the series ‘In the open’.
The performance is an interior address and an astrological reading of Eliza Junor through her birth sign of Virgo, as a method of gaining perspective and understanding of this woman and the course of her life that took her from Essequibo in British Guyana to the Black Isle in Scotland.
Using the influential astrology book ‘Knot of Time: Astrology and Female Experience’ by Lindsay River and Sally Gillespie as a guide, the performance interpreted Junor through characteristics derived from the horoscope in order to speculate and elaborate on the sparse information recorded about Junor as a Caribbean-Scottish woman.
Project Details
Ashanti Harris, ‘Virgo’ (2020) was presented via Instagram Live to accompany the audio work 'History Haunts the Body' (2020), commissioned for 'In the open', a series of audio works devised for listening during daily walks and time outdoors.
