DREAMS TRIUMPH

Each of the shortlisted artists were tasked with creating a short-form moving-image work responding to the concept of “dreams” for the judges’ consideration. For Perry, this was a chance to look inward in order to reflect on our current reality. Taking the psychoanalytic association of dreams and their role as gateways to the subconscious as its point of departure, Lineage creates a “dream space” which reimagines the stories of her family passed down across several generations, reconfiguring these memories through images and video. However, like in many of Perry’s works, the personal becomes a way to open up larger questions about the contemporary experience, in this case, how we can attain intimacy in an era of social distancing.

The solitude of the theremin player jars with the footage of communal activities -- dancing, going to church, doing hair -- yet the presence of the glitch, which dissolves images into one another, bridges the sociality of the past with the isolation of the present. Lineage is thus not only a work about connection through history, but also about finding intimacy at a time of restricted proximity. As the electronic voice in the video intonates: “When we walk towards someone, it feels like we are walking under water, but we can reach them if we stretch our arms”. The poetic way the work captured universal feelings of longing won over the judges, leading to their unanimous decision to award Perry the commission.