Savanah Pennell

The Home With the Date Tree is a series of connections to my home. While spending time in Sharjah, UAE, I found many commonalities to my home in Phoenix, Arizona, including, the presence of a majority religion, a conservative government, a massive car culture, the desert, and the presence of salt (the desalination of the ocean in the UAE and the Salt River in Arizona). While in Sharjah, I became aware of the proverb “a house with a date palm with never starve.” This phrase struck me, as my grandmother had always had a date tree in her yard, and her house was always a place of abundant welcoming and a seemingly infinite space for those in need. Later, I discovered the use of the date by other artists such as Michael Rakowitz and academics like Ella Shohat. The date is a symbol of how I find home in places that are seemingly unfamiliar or uncomfortable to me. The video includes purchased dates from NYC, another place that I have tried to find home in. In reality, my home is wherever I am in the moment. This work was made with support by the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research Fund.

Bubblegum Pop is a commentary on the relationship between beauty and femininity, and how that beauty can be destroyed, and reborn into something new. This multi-channel piece documents the common journey of many women who choose to rebel against “girly” facets of life (such as the color pink, makeup and pop music) because they are seen as trivial by society. Makeup, and other feminine items are quite literally destroyed in this piece, but eventually they are reclaimed in a new, empowering way. The poem being narrated was composed by breaking apart lyrics of pop songs by women, and the music itself is a distortion of one of these songs.

Lanes Lines is a piece about competition amongst women, and how the patriarchal system creates it, with competitive swimming being a metaphor for this futile rivalry. This piece highlights how women are constantly pushed to go above and beyond what is expected, and pushed to conform to being the “perfect woman” in a man’s eyes. This anguish forces many women to step on one another in order to get ahead and win.