Deborah-Joyce Holman’s Subtle yet Revolutionary Expression of Black Femininity
Title: Reclaiming the Everyday: Deborah-Joyce Holman’s “Close-Up” and the Power of Intimate Representation
At the Swiss Institute in New York City, Swiss-British artist and filmmaker Deborah-Joyce Holman offers viewers a visual meditation in her 2024 film installation Close-Up. This work, a restaging of a scene from her 2023 multichannel video installation Close-Up/Quiet as It’s Kept, centers on the daily domestic gestures of a Black woman — played by artist and performer Tia Bannon — as she navigates the quiet solitude of her home. What appears at first to be a minimalist portrayal of mundane tasks transforms, under Holman’s deliberate cinematic eye, into a radical act of representation and reconsideration of Black femininity in visual culture.
A Radical Stillness
The film, displayed as a wall-sized projection in an otherwise sparse, quiet gallery room, invites viewers to linger in moments that are often overlooked: a woman laying down for rest, scratching her head, smelling tulips, making tea, and washing her hands. These everyday movements might, in another context, be dismissed as unremarkable. But under Holman’s lens, they carry profound weight. The use of 16mm film, with its characteristic graininess and tactile warmth, elevates these gestures to something poetic, nearly meditative. The wide-angle shots create intimacy, as if we are present alongside Bannon, not merely watching but participating in her gestures.
As the viewer follows along with her deliberate, gentle actions, appreciation begins to bloom for the subtle beauty of the ordinary: the ultramarine kettle, the radiant tone of her skin against the cool film palette, the delicate shimmer of minimalist jewelry, and the texture of her two curly braids. This aestheticization of the quotidian becomes a political gesture, one that repositions the Black interior space not as spectacle, but as a site of beauty, dignity, and self-definition.
Challenging the Dominant Gaze
Holman’s work pushes back against the historically dominant cinematic gaze — one that is often Eurocentric, patriarchal, and voyeuristic. Traditionally, Black women have found themselves either invisibilized or hyper-visible through demeaning tropes in mainstream film. From “the angry Black woman” to “the superwoman,” these archetypes have constrained Black female subjectivity within narrow and often damaging frames.
In Close-Up, Holman subverts this paradigm by refusing narrative clarity and resisting the imposition of traditional cinematic spectacle. The film is nonlinear, devoid of dialogue, and marked by deliberate moments of blur and abstraction. These choices serve to unsettle the expectations of viewers accustomed to filmic clarity and plot progression. Instead of guiding viewers with storylines or emotional signposts, Holman fosters a quiet ambiguity. This results in a powerful kind of opacity — an aesthetic that refuses full access to the inner world of its subject.
In doing so, Holman aligns with the ideas of Black feminist scholars like Tina Campt, who explore alternative modes of looking. Campt conceptualizes a “Black gaze” — one that privileges intimacy, empathy, and co-presence rather than domination and consumption. Viewers are not invited to look down on the subject from a privileged vantage point; rather, they must pay attention, sit with stillness, and look “with, through, and alongside” the protagonist. This decentering of the gaze challenges hierarchies embedded in conventional viewing practices and asserts new ways of seeing and being seen.
Domesticity as Resistance
By placing a Black woman alone in a domestic environment and portraying her actions as meaningful rather than mundane, Holman stages a subtle but deeply insurgent act. She reclaims domesticity — traditionally a gendered sphere tied to invisibility and undervaluation — and imbues it with artistic and political importance. In withholding spectacle, Holman critiques the mainstream appetite for Black trauma and performance, offering instead a counter-vision infused with care, gentleness, and self-sovereignty.
This reframing of the domestic and the minimal as sites of contemplation and agency resonates deeply in today’s media-saturated world, where hyper-visibility, performativity, and surveillance of Black bodies remain pervasive. By refusing to offer full access to Bannon’s interior life, Holman safeguards her subject’s privacy while still honoring her presence and power.
An Alternative Visual Grammar
Perhaps most striking about Close-Up is its ability to reimagine what form Black representation can take. Holman’s abstract, fragmentary, and non-linear visual grammar disrupts the dominant cinematic codes, making space for slower, quieter, and richer portrayals. In doing so, she contributes to a broader movement among artists and filmmakers who seek to redefine the language of film in order to better capture the complexity and richness of Black life.
Deborah-Joyce Holman’s Close-Up serves as a timely reminder that beauty, power, and meaning reside in the unnoticed. By