There’s a moment in one of the videos in C. Davida Ingram’s A Book with No Pages—on view at the UW’s Jacob Lawrence Gallery through March 13—where the entire world seems to shift polarity.
The video opens with a dance performed by David Rue and Randy Ford to a soundtrack sung by Alisa Dickinson. Both dancers are wearing bright red dresses, which sway and flow against a tree-green background. “Red and green make brown,” Ingram says about this tableau. “It’s a painting. At the end of the day, I’m a colorist.”
In the next scene, Rue is holding a rag doll with peach skin and yarn-yellow hair, running a hand along her body. Slowly and ritualistically, he hands the doll to Ford, flipping it so that her torso becomes a handle, her crisp lavender skirt standing upward to frame her feet.