Yonges Island


Portia Cobb

Artist Bio

Yonges Island is a short experimental documentary presented in a series of projected video “tapestries.” The project explores current issues concerning ownership and disenfranchisement of inherited land by African Americans in the South. The film focuses on Cobb’s own family, who faces the dilemma of losing land that was earned by the labor of their great grandmother in 1894. The project is designed for presentation in outdoor spaces in the area where the research is focused: Yonges Island, Edisto, and Charleston, South Carolina.


Award Year
2000
Status

Discontinued

SONY DSC

Portia Cobb

Milwaukee, WI

Documentary filmmaker Portia Cobb lives in Milwaukee, WI. She has been making films since 1989, including Homecomings, Exhausted, Drive-by Shoot and No Justice, No Peace. Her showings include The Walker Art Center, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum of Modern Art, and the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco. She is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.