FINAL PROJECT SUMMARY: “The Phenakistoscope of Resilience: A Community Shadow Performance”
For my final performance intervention, I created The Phenakistoscope of Resilience, a participatory shadow-based animation project that transforms real human expressions of emotional struggle into a collective artwork. The project began with a simple question I asked my peers: “What movement would your body make if you were thinking about the word Strength, Healing, Community, Struggle, Stressed, or Resilience?” By inviting people to physically respond to emotionally charged words, I created a space for performance, reflection, and dialogue.
A strong influence for my project was Kara Walker, whose silhouette installations use shadow, gesture, and simplified forms to communicate deep narratives about trauma and history. Her work helped me understand that silhouettes are powerful precisely because of their simplicity: they strip away detail and leave only movement, shape, and emotion. As Walker writes, “The silhouette says a lot with very little information,” showing me that a shadow can hold an entire story.
What is the project? Why this topic and form?
My project is an activist-based performance intervention using performative movement, shadow documentation, and phenakistoscope animation. I chose this topic because mental health struggles are deeply personal and widespread, especially for students navigating stress, identity, and community pressures. The form of outreach photographing and animating shadows connects directly to my identity as an animator, allowing me to merge activism with my artistic practice.
The Art and Activism textbook explains that “art is a method of witnessing and reshaping the world around us.” I wanted to use animation not as entertainment, but as a tool to witness real emotional movements from real people.
Message for the audience
My message is that emotions live in the body, and that communities hold more resilience than they realize. When people performed movements based on words like Strength or Struggle, they externalized internal experiences. When arranged together on a phenakistoscope, these gestures form a looping animation of collective endurance, reminding viewers that hardship and healing are shared human experiences.
As Maura Reilly states, “Activism in art seeks to correct invisibility.” My installation makes invisible emotional labor visible, turning it into a moving artwork.
How I reached an audience
I conducted the intervention in person by recording each participant in front of a projection light, capturing their shadow as they performed their chosen pose. After filming, participants reacted with excitement and curiosity many expressed that the activity made them reflect on how their bodies naturally express stress or resilience.
This process inviting participants, filming them, sharing the shadows functioned as the performance itself. Once the phenakistoscope is complete, I will present it both physically and digitally so the animation becomes accessible to a larger audience.
Professional connection
This project fits directly into my portfolio as an animator and visual storyteller. It shows:
community engagement
performance-based research
storytelling through motion
physical and digital art integration
It demonstrates a unique niche: activist animation, where movement comes from real people rather than imagined characters.
Each cut-out silhouette becomes one frame on a spinning disc.
When the disc spins - is viewed through slits - under a light, the silhouettes animate - moving like a loop of embodied, motion.
It is literally animation created from real bodies, highlighting the humanity behind silhouettes.
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