AIRIE Fellow
Ania Freer
2022 April
Photography & Filmmaking
Kingston, Jamaica
Ania Freer is an Australian-Jamaican artist, filmmaker, cultural researcher, and curator based in Kingston, Jamaica. She attended The University of Sydney and received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Film Theory. Through installation and video portraiture, as well as her curatorial work, Freer addresses themes central to the Jamaican experience such as Black empowerment, resistance, feminism, environmental justice, and spirituality. She is the founder of Goat Curry Gallery and the documentary filmmaker behind the video portraiture series REAL TALK. Ania has exhibited at the London CHROM International Art Festival (2017) and the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Summer Exhibition (2019). She curated her first group exhibition, ‘All That Don’t Leave’, during her Curatorial and Art Writing fellowship at New Local Space Kingston (2019), is an inaugural Fellow in the 2021 cohort of Caribbean Film Academy and the grant recipient of the New York Black Creative Endeavours Grant (2020) and the Filmed by Bike BIPOC Filmmaker Grant, Oregon (2021).
BIO
Kaa-Ha-Yut-Le from Passages at the Nest
“Kaa-Ha-Yut-Le is a video portrait that expands on an ongoing body of work initiated in Jamaica that explores identity and cultural memory. In the Everglades, my gaze shifted to focus on the natural environment. Equipped with my camera and field recorder I built a personal sense of intimacy with my surroundings through the process of slowly and carefully documenting the plants, animals, and landscape. Towards the end of my AIRIE residency, I had the privilege of spending time with Daniel Tommie (Bird Clan and member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida). Invited into his studio, a Cypress Dome in Big Cypress, Daniel shared stories, memories, and personal experiences that ground and connect him to his land and ancestry. This video is a product of my time in the Everglades and is as much a portrait of a person as it is a place.”