M. Lamar: Funeral Doom Spiritual


ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries
April 15 – July 30, 2016
In Funeral Doom Spiritual, M. Lamar suggests that it is only with an intense awareness of this “motionless movement,” carrying the coffins of the fallen “on our backs,” that we can proceed. Taking place a century in the future, the exhibition focuses on a protagonist forever “carrying carrying carrying” these coffins. Drawing on Negro Spirituals that call for the end times, what Lamar calls Doom Spirituals, this installation at ONE Archives exhumes legacies of racial violence while longing for the forthcoming destruction of white supremacy.

The installation included a commissioned video by Lamar shot at ONE Archives on the fetishistic photography of Miles Everritt, part of the archives’s holdings. 

Find more information about this exhibition and performance here.





Installation views of M. Lamar: Funeral Doom Spiritual. Photos by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy of ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries