Ayanna Dozier
Ayanna Dozier (PhD) is a Brooklyn-based artist–writer. Her art practice centers performance, experimental film, printmaking, and photography, using auto-fiction, surrealist, conceptual, and feminist methods. She is currently an assistant professor in communication, emphasis in film, at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the author of Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope (2020).
A new 4K restoration of Fresh Kill, led by Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University, will begin a roadshow tour in North American theaters this spring, with its first stop occurring at BAM.
Across her 40 years as an author, hooks prioritized film as the leading site of insurrectional possibility that could radicalize the body to practice love. Across criticism, theory, and interviews with filmmakers, hooks wrestled with the liberatory possibilities that Black feminism specifically brings to image-making.
Zola (played by Taylour Paige) is rendered as an audience stand-in rather than an active force who managed to negotiate her safety during an attempt to sex traffic her on a “hoe trip.” Zola is more invested in the absolution of King’s actions that weekend. As such, the film overlooks King’s experience with sex work beyond the stripper’s pole.
