“YENE FIKIR ETHIOPIA (MY LOVE ETHIOPIA)”: This still from a 2019 film by Gabrielle Tesfaye is featured in “an explorer, a tracer of lost tribes, a seeker of clues to feelings,” an exhibition of stop-motion animation by Tesfaye, Carrie Hawks, and Jordan Wong, on view January 9 through March 24 at the Anne Reid ’72 Gallery at Princeton Day School.

The Anne Reid ’72 Gallery at Princeton Day School presents “an explorer, a tracer of lost tribes, a seeker of clues to feelings,” an exhibition of stop-motion animation by Carrie Hawks, Gabrielle Tesfaye, and Jordan Wong, on view January 9 through March 24.  The show takes its title from the poem “A Remembrance of Ritual” by Betye Saar in Serious Moonlight, the accompanying catalogue to rarely seen installation work shown at ICA Miami in 2022.

A public reception is on January 19 from 3:30-5:30 p.m.

Akin to Saar, Hawks, Tesfaye, and Wong incorporate a wide range of found and created materials into their artwork. This exhibition features films made with fabric, hair, drawn and painted puppets, and natural matter such as leaves and bark. Each film is sensitive, serious, intimate, and personal — inviting the viewer to witness and relate to themes of identity, ancestry, mythology, and the body.

Hawks’ film Origin of Hair (2019) explores legacies of self-love and Black identity through collage, remnants of human hair and handmade puppets. Hawks drew inspiration from the life and activism of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Black American musician responsible for popularizing the electric guitar and the invention of pop gospel in the mid-1900s. Inner Wound Real (2022) weaves together three stories about individuals dealing with self-harm and then finding alternative methods of coping. Hawks’ film centers the experiences of queer BIPOC folk who are often excluded from mainstream conversations about self-harm and healing.

Tesfaye’s hand-painted puppets guide viewers through historical, personal, spiritual, and mythological realms of human knowledge, beauty, and pain. Tesfaye opens her film The Water Will Carry Us Home (2018) with a ritual that engages her own body and elemental objects including bone and fire. At the culmination of the ceremony Tesfaye holds her hand up to the camera revealing a tattooed eye which envelops our gaze and offers us entry into her animated world. Her second film, Yene Fikir Ethiopia (My Love Ethiopia) (2019), follows a young refugee separated from her family during the Red Terror in Ethiopia during the 1970s who finds super powers within herself under the protection of an ancient goddess. Tesfaye uses stop-motion like alchemy — transforming loss and displacement into empowerment and connection.

Wong’s film Mom’s Clothes (2018) animates a range of textiles borrowed from his mother’s wardrobe. In his words the work is “a nonfiction reflection on being out of the closet” and a reminder that “you’re beautiful however you decide to present, including the choice of garments you decide to wear.” Each frame pulsates with color, texture, and sound. Even though the viewer’s vantage point is static, the materials within each frame are restless and fluidly oscillate between microscopic views of thread and yarn and a variety of zoomed out patterns many of which seem to be hand-dyed.

Princeton Day School is at 650 Great Road. For more information, visit pds.org.