Steffani Jemison
Site: Union Station
Curator: Diya Vij
Sky Is the Only Roof, 2023. Sound installation with Jackie and Papa Wright.
Untitled (Ripple), 2023. Retired theatrical drapes.
Untitled (Press), 2023. Penny Press.
Steffani Jemison’s multidisciplinary practice spans time-based, sculptural, and discursive mediums, informed by deep research into movement practices, literature, ethnomusicology, and the history of cinema.
Sky Is the Only Roof, a three-part site-specific installation by Jemison, is inspired by the complex legacy of the Black stage in the Downtown West neighborhood of St. Louis as it intersects with the region’s legacies of migration, dispersion, and flight. Invoking St. Louis-born performer Josephine Baker as an icon of Black expatriation, the works take root in these themes of loss and longing. Jemison explores the transitory history of Black artists and performers in the city of St. Louis.
Installed in Union Station, once the biggest railroad terminal in the world and today an indoor-outdoor entertainment destination and hotel, Jemison presents three works: Sky Is the Only Roof, a sound installation made in collaboration with St. Louis storytellers and performers Jackie and Papa Wright; Untitled (Ripple), a monumental sculpture of decommissioned theater drapes and scenic canvas flats; and Untitled (Press), a functional penny press with fragments of lyrics invoking freedom sung by Baker (“sky is the only / roof I’ve ever had”).
Baker’s early career in vaudeville and dance is associated with many St. Louis venues formerly clustered near Union Station, including iconic Black theaters and cinemas such as Club Riviera, Ruby’s Zodiac Lounge, the huge Booker T. Washington Theater, and others, which were subsequently entirely destroyed. The project pays homage to this lost history by producing symbolic and real tokens of change and exchange.
All money collected through Untitled (Press) will be donated to The Black Rep, a 45-year-old legacy Black arts organization in St. Louis committed to producing, re-imagining, and commissioning work written by Black playwrights and creating opportunities for new voices and youth. Thank you to Sky Has No Roof site partner Union Station for hosting this project and for generously donating a portion of ticket sales from The Wheel during the run of Counterpublic 2023 to The Black Rep.
Note from the artist:
Sky Is the Only Roof began as a meditation on movement, travel, and performance in and through St. Louis, a meditation on Black life and the legacy of live performance generated by one of the largest Black communities in the United States in the twentieth century: Mill Creek Valley. When I arrived in town, one of my first tasks was to explore the neighborhood on foot. I came prepared with a spreadsheet and map plotting two dozen Black performance spaces active in the 1930s and 40s—concert and vaudeville halls, nightclubs, theaters—all clustered within a radius of a half mile. (Continued here.)
In Conversation: Jackie and Glen “Papa” Wright in conversation with Steffani Jemison
“Sky Is the Only Roof” Production Credits:
Performers: Jackie Wright, Glen “Papa” Wright
Recording: Shock City Studios
Additional recording: Justin Hicks
Edited by: Steffani Jemison
Mixed by: Sean T. Davis
“Sky Is the Only Roof” Transcription
Diffraction. Noun. In optics, "the spreading of light or deflection of its rays,"
Diffraction. From a Latin root that means "break apart in pieces.”
I have been a rover since I was a child,
No one to love or care for me.
Knocked around all over, kinda grew up wild -
My home's wherever I may be.
Ain't no someone yearnin', wonderin' where I be;
I'm gone, but no one's missin' me;
Ain't no light a-burnin' ev'ry night for me;
I'm like a bird that's flyin' free.
I'm just breezin' along with the breeze,
Trailin' the rails, roamin' the seas.
Like the birdies that sing in the trees,
Pleasin' to live, livin' to please.
The sky is the only roof I have over my head;
And when I'm weary, Mother Nature makes my bed.
I'm just goin' along as I please,
Breezin' along with the breeze.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Steffani Jemison is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum, Jeu de Paume, CAPC Bordeaux, MoMA, RISD Museum, LA><ART, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Biennial, and more. Jemison has completed artist residencies with the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Project Row Houses, the Studio Museum in Harlem AIR, and others. She was an Art Matters grantee, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Foundation awardee, an NYFA Fellow in Video/Film, the Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study with Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Visual Art.
