Source material for Unusual Sympathy: I am following the river / Down the highway / Through the cradle of the civil war
Drive home from the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson, Nashville, TN, 2009  (Video, 06:25 min.)  
Watercolor and ink on paper
22-3/8” x 30”

Vanderbilt Artists Exhibit
Work by Artists from Vanderbilt University's Department of Art
(October 21 – December 9, 2010)

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

Artist Biography

Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an assistant professor of art, teaching video and performance art at Vanderbilt. Classically trained as an opera singer at the Eastman Conservatory of Music in Rochester, New York, she received her undergraduate degree at George Mason University in 2000, studying sculpture and time based art and receiving her BAIS in Performance Art. She received her MFA in Transmedia (time based art) from the University of Texas, Austin in 2008. She has been in numerous group shows and art fairs nationally and internationally. Since 2007, Winger-Bearskin has also been an artist-at-large for the perpetual art machine [PAM]. Recently, she has been focusing her performances primarily on Asian performance festivals, traveling to China, South Korea and the Philippines.

Artist Statement

Unusual Sympathy: I am following the river / Down the highway / Through the cradle of the civil war (video) and the drawings of the stills from the video were included in a three-part show in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2009, at Gallery F. at Scarritt Bennett Center and at the Hermitage, Home of President Andrew Jackson.
           
The video and drawings were created by Winger-Bearskin as her contribution to a collaborative project in partnership with artist Carlin Wing. The first show, Unusual Sympathy, was an installation of drawings, video, original songs, text, and photography revolving around a Creek Indian boy, Lyncoya, who was orphaned on the battlefield and adopted by Andrew Jackson. The second show, Changement de Pieds (a dance term meaning the change of foot when one leaps into the air and lands on a different foot), was inspired by the role of the Hermitage as a historical site within the local community. The third and final part of the series was a video installation at the Hermitage on May 17, 2009, in conjunction with the Enslaved Memorial Dedication Ceremony.