LADA Screens: Maxima Smith – Online Screening

About 'Crying with my Family'

Crying with my Family (2022) questions the authenticity of emotion as well as how non-verbal somatic processing can lead to corporeal catharsis and collective healing. The film is set in the artist’s family home, where she is joined around the kitchen table by her brother and parents. As they follow the direction to cut onions, they begin to produce tears and silently cry.

This work was made within the final few weeks of the artist’s grandfather’s life, and the complex family dynamics surrounding this led to a difficulty in processing emotions during this period. Within this context, the performance uses the camera as an ‘excuse’ to ‘perform’ tears and in turn process corporeally and silently through a collective moment of sadness.

Crying with my Family is imbued with the themes of voice(less) care and healing and proposes that in a world in which everything is processed through language, text and screens, there is irreplaceable importance to being in space with one another, to bypass verbalisation and process somatically, and heal on a cellular level. By keeping the moment non-verbal, free from intricacies or details, Maxima’s hope is that her family can act as a stand-in for whomever is watching, and whomever they would like to cut onions and cry with.

Film credits
Crying with my Family, 2022, 4k Video, 09:52.