A LOVER'S TOUCH

4K / 5-Channel Video / English with English Subtitles / 5.1 Surround Sound / 24.12 min / 2022

A Lover’s Touch”, is a 5-channel video installation that investigates domestic abuse within interracial relationships. Told through a simulated psychotherapy session with characters Dolores Moreira and Marc Eichmann, the work observes how patriarchal masculinity is linked to violence, emotional repression and furthermore white supremacy while probing how fear, migration and economic codependency affect romantic partnerships. The work calls into question how class hierarchies and racial fetishization affect women of color while posing critical questions on misogyny while redefining themes of masculinity.

The project examines the hypersexualization and social polarization of Women of Color in Western society, addressing the intersection of race, class, and misogyny rooted in colonial history. The work raises critical questions about how Eurocentric narratives of Women of Color perpetuate dominant ideas of “exoticism” and perpetuate xenophobic perceptions that lead to Women of Color's marginalization and systemic abuse. In seeking to understand how the racialized female body is both a site of temptation and domination, A Lover's Touch addresses how shame and segregation sustain the silent realities of intimate partner violence.

The video installation examines notions of patriarchal desires and the realities of ethnic sexualization and unravels colonialist exoticism. The work explores how power perpetuates structural oppression and contributes to violence against those who are vulnerable to oppression - women of Color.

PROTEST AND DESIRE

4K / 2-channel video / 19.55 min / Surround Sound / 2019

Protest and Desire is a video artwork that challenges popular STD / HIV discourse by focusing on how women of color deal with intimacy, sex, and age that relates to STDs and HIV within the landscape of white Europe. The video concentrates on an endearing 2 year portrait of, “Lillian”, a 49 year old woman from Uganda who has lived in Germany since the early 2000s as a consequence of her HIV status. Her words disentangle notions about how women of color relate to their own sexuality, interracial relationships, ideas of belonging, and their personal complexities with HIV / STDs. The work delicately unveils inherent biases that are bound to women of color and their struggle to attain acceptance both within and outside their own communities. Through dream like sequences and whimsical imagery, Protest and Desire imagines new ways to define what is normal and propels new meaning on “sickness”, desire, and relationships by confronting the ghosts of the past and the fears that haunt our present realities.

COOL GIRL

4/3 Video Color / Sound / 4.55 min / 2019

Sound Design Sum Sum Shen

The video collage, Cool Girl, plays with racialized female characters amid Hollywood cinema, 80s dance pop music, and video game culture. Through fast editing and vivid action scenes from culture classics - Kill Bill, Street Fighter, Waiting to Exhale and What's Love Got to Do with It? the characters in Cool Girl seek revenge, vengeance and liberation from their white counterparts and male adversaries, alluding to both the ominous and restrictive ways in which popular culture exoticize and form caricatures of women of color. Through humorous visuals and abrupt sound juxtapositions, Cool Girl confronts the audience with absurd and often violent racial depictions that are otherwise left unseen.

BITCHES AND WITCHES

4/3 video / color / sound /4.30 min/ 2019

Sound Design Sum Sum Shen

The video collage, Bitches and Witches, combines frantic editing amid various versions of Lady Gaga's song Bad Romance among movie scenes from Metropolis, Secretary, The Craft and The Witches of Eastwick. Working with themes of heartbreak, shame, misogyny and lust, Bitches and Witches strives to uncover the invisible ways in which misogyny unveils itself in relationships. Stereotypes of femininity are vividly interwoven between playful soundscapes and face-paced jump cuts to form a bold investigation on how sexual violence is ultimately linked to misogynistic attitudes and tendencies in relationships.

LABOR OF LOVE

HD video, Color / Sound, 22.55 min, 2016

The 22 minute length video "Labor of Love" dissects the freelance labor conditions of professional horseracing through an endearing series of portraits of several German-based international jockeys including Andrasch Starke winner of the 2011 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and the 2012 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and considered by many the best German jockey of all time.  From the side of the tracks, horseracing appears as a sport rooted in pedigree, exclusivity, and elitism; at the opposite end of the spectrum is the reality of the jockeys’ existence. Many of them come from immigrant backgrounds, and sacrifice family life, health, safety, and material comfort in their dedication to the sport they love. While their voices are rarely heard in the mainstream sports world, the jockeys in D’Angelo’s work speak freely and openly about the pressures and dangers of their everyday lives and careers, which are held to a delicate precipice and impending expiration date owing to such factors as body weight, age, and injury.

PAST, PRESENT, TENSE

HD Video / Color & Sound / German with English Subtitles / 32 min /2015

Past, Present, Tense,  is a video work that examines the question of German identity and its relationship to racism of the past and present day. Through various interviews the viewer observes social and political transitions in Germany, the GDR, Post-reunification and the pogroms starting in Rostock, & contemporary Germany society.

The work seeks to redefine social positions and identities within the framework of intimate dialogs that challenge the status quo on how to define not only German identity but geopolitics in the context  of white Europe. As such, the audience is posed with questions on what are the responsibilities of dealing with colonial pasts and how do we reflect on dominant ideologies and discourse in a time of constant mobility and global shifts?

In a time of cultural amnesia, recalling the past and the retelling of memories is becoming more and more under-rated in a time when forgetting is common practice. Through telling interviews that discuss the perspectives of Germans of minority descent, the film highlights many of the experiences and opinions that are otherwise unheard and unseen within our shared public space. It thus asks the audience to realign their perception of class, race and privilege that run alongside labels that ultimately offer a limited scope on the complexity of identity politics rooted in colonial exclusionary traditions.