Right on the tails of Kim Harris’ release for her new single, “Once You Were Wondrous,” comes the video for the third instalment in her trilogy of self-discovery and re-invention. Where the song immediately left us with goosebumps, the video capitalizes on that momentum to hammer home a message: being whoever you are should be perfectly okay. Preferably, that sentiment would come without any necessity of challenging the norm, but should the times call for it….
In the video for “Once You Were Wondrous,” Harris upholds the ideals of the Rubenesque but, more than that, it challenges any number of reasons why someone’s mere existence should be seen, or questioned, as a statement.
Harris herself says it best:
“I wanted to make a video, where I could ‘glow without apologizing,’ with other women like me, as extensions of myself. I wanted to be swimming. I wanted to be in formations together on a beach, mystic and ethereal,” says Kim Harris. “In the planning stages, as I spoke with people about the treatment for this video, the first reaction was always an immediate, ‘how brave of you!’ It is rare to see big bodies presented as objects of beauty.”
“It is political to put my fat queer body in a gold bathing suit for the public. But does it have to be? We live in a world that both hates and fears fat bodies. Living in one as an artist, it’s impossible to separate my life from my work. Along with a team of queer filmmakers, I made the video for ‘Once You Were Wondrous’ as an offering of the beauty and splendour of bodies like mine, in celebration, because I needed to.”
Kim Harris’s new full-length album is set to arrive in early 2020 via LHM Records.
Tour Dates:
09.27.19 – Charlottetown, PEI @ Contact East
10.12-13.19 – Corner Brook, NL @ Make Music Happen
10.23.19 – Halifax, NS @ Songs of the City (HPX)
11.07-10.19 – Truro, NS @ Nova Scotia Music Week