Upcoming events
$10 door fee; members enter FREE
Spring SEASON - FEATURING LIVE PERFORMANCES Every other Friday
Grace Exhibition Space is proud to announce a series of dynamic performances set to take place every other Friday. Curated from a diverse group of artists, including local NYC artists chosen from our Open Call last summer, as well as esteemed international artists who have presented at Grace in the past, this series promises to be an electrifying exploration of contemporary performance art.
CENTRAL - Performance Festival by Pancho López
Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York.
In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being.
Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
CENTRAL - Performance Festival by Pancho López
Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York.
In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being.
Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
CENTRAL - Performance Festival by Pancho López
Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York.
In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being.
Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
CENTRAL - Performance Festival by Pancho López
Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York.
In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being.
Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
CENTRAL - Performance Festival by Pancho López (Copy)
Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York.
In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being.
Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
CENTRAL - Performance Festival by Pancho López
Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York.
In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being.
Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
LIVE PERFORMANCES: Investigating pathways and concepts for gesturing strange rituals
Local NYC performance artists and invited internatiobnal artists will be creating magic for this amazing evening.
Transitions on Spring: Featuring Viviana Druga | Molly Ross | Julia Hsia, Hsiao-Chu Hsia | Amelia Marzec
Friday, April 5
Doors 7pm
Performances 8-10 pm
$10 | Purchase Tickets
Featuring: Viviana Druga [Transylvania/Berlin] | Molly Ross [NYC] | Julia Hsia, Hsiao-Chu Hsia [NYC/Taiwan] | Amelia Marzec [NYC/Poland]
Bagpipe by Andrew Forbes 7-8 pm
VIVIANA DRUGA is a Romanian visual artist based in Berlin. The interplay between the free mountain nature and the Christian Orthodox mysticism on her mother's side deeply influenced her during this time.
HSIAO-CHU HSIA is a multidisciplinary artist from Taiwan, now based in New York, USA. Hsia’s practice focuses on performance art and dance improvisation, addressing the theme of ”relationship.”
MOLLY ROSS is an artist based in Brooklyn NY. She engages with choreography, performance, and collage practices. Her work has been presented at PAGEANT, Essex Flowers, FourOneOne (curated by Moriah Evans), the Wild Project (curated by Kyla Gordan) and DIY spaces throughout NYC.
AMELIA MARZEC is an American artist focused on rebuilding and engaging with local communications infrastructure to prepare for an uncertain future. Her work has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH, MIT, ISEA (Canada) and is part of the Rhizome ArtBase.
kyle b. co. Critical Race Therapy: (Treatment 1/The Rhythm Treatment)
Critical Race Therapy :Treatment 1 Intensive is now at Grace Exhibition Space
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Grace Exhibition Space presents a soft opening with kyle b. Co, hosting a series of interviews by artist kyle b. co. entitled Critical Race Therapy: (Treatment 1/The Rhythm Treatment).
Critical Race Therapy was developed by kyle b. co. to provide a space for people to have conversations around race that are not punitive or prompted by a traumatic event (i.e. following the death of a black body, after the misstep of an institution, etc.). The process invites folks to vocalize their understanding of race and in so doing, respond or acknowledge where they are at in their practical understanding and comfort with race.
Signup for a 1:1 experience at https://calendly.com/crth/ges
Hours 1:00 - 6:00 pm
Spring Season
INTIMATE CONSUMER ZONES
Open Call: lele dai, Glenn Potter-Takata / International: Arai Shin-Ichi [Japan], Jessica Fairfax-Hirst [Dominican Republic]
MARCH 22 // Doors 7:00 PM / Performances 8:00 PM | $10
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
lele dai was born in Hangzhou, China, and moved to Sydney, Australia, at age 18. In 2013, lele visited New York City by accident and has stayed there ever since. lele lives in Brooklyn with their best friend and two lovely but strange cats. lele is currently studying in the MFA program at Hunter College.
Their visual work and performances have been exhibited or shown at The Glove, Greene-Naftali Gallery, Children’s Museum of the Arts, Downtown Music Gallery, David Zwirner Gallery, Shift 411 Kent, Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Secret Project Robot, NYU, Sunview Luncheonette, Columbus Theater (Providence), Microscope Gallery, Knitting Factory, Essex flowers Gallery, Tufts University, SUNY at Purchase, Here Theater, Knockdown Center, Elsewhere, TransPecos, the Abasement series at Max Fish, The Synesthesia, and various other venues.
Glenn Potter-Takata is a Japanese-American media designer and artist working in performance. His work has been presented in dance and gallery contexts around NYC as part of programs with Center for Performance Research, Abrons Art Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Mabou Mines, New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix, Pioneers Go East’s Crossroads Series, Amanda + James’ Summer Happenings Series, Triskelion Arts, Mizuma & Kips Wada Art, and Trotter&Sholer. His first solo gallery exhibition opened at Rogers Studio Gallery in Las Vegas in January of 2023. Glenn is a recipient of the 2023 Bronx Cultural Visions Award, 2022 MAP Fund Award, 2022 Bronx Dance Fund Award, and has been awarded residencies through Movement Research, Rogers Art Loft, Gibney Dance Center, and CUNY Dance Initiative/Lehman College. Glenn received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he is currently a teacher of media design for live performance.
Arai Shin-Ichi [Japan]
ARAI lives and works in Tokyo. He studied his B.A. in Chinese modern literature at Tokyo Metropolitan University under Mr.llKURA Shohei. Later he majored in printmaking (Intaglio/Copper printing) from 1981 to 1987 under ex Mr.YOSHIDA Katsuro (Mono-ha group.) He also began experimenting with sound, voice, and language performance actions since 1982. As a Japan Overseas Cooperative Volunteer, he taught at Nyumba ya Sanaa Art School in Zanzibar, Tanzania 1992-94 where he experienced various insights into the relationship between culture and politics in contemporary society. This led to his radical social-political performances today. In his raw and direct style, ARAI's body appears as a site of social tension presented with humor yet biting criticism. Often exposing the conservative and xenophobic cultural tendencies and contradictions in global and local situations. Besides performing regularly in Japan, ARAI has also presented his works internationally, especially in China such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Xian, Chengdu, Changchun, and Beijing.
Jessica Fairfax-Hirst [Dominican Republic]
Jessica makes performances, videos, installations, and texts, sometimes all in the same project. Jessica creates metaphoric crumple zones, the parts of a car’s body designed to absorb the massive energy caused by the impact of a crash. Like the engineering of a crumple zone, Jessica’s works seek to create a space to observe controlled deformation, rather than merely succumb to chaotic destruction. They explore ways to redirect and absorb the forces that threaten to crush us.
GRACE UNDERGROUND: ACTION ON ACTIONS
ACTION ON ACTIONS #4
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18th, 2023
4:00 – 6:00 PM Free + snacks & beverages provided
ACTION ON ACTIONS is an opportunity for conversations on performance art that move beyond our Friday nights’ to a more expanded discussion, featuring various guest artists with presentations, workshops and in-progress short performances.
AGENDA:
4:00 Meet performance artists participating in the Immersive Festival/NYC
4:30-5:30 Short Performances
5:30 Presentation by Jill McDermid
Our question is: “What is Performance art?”
South American Artists curated by NATACHA VOLIAKOVSKY
SOUTH-AMERICAN PERFORMANCE ART CYCLE @ NEW YORK CITY
The “South-American Performance Art” cycle @ New York City is a three-night program organized and curated by Argentina Performance Art (APA), founded by Argentinian performance artist Natacha Voliakovsky.
This cycle transcends Argentine borders to enrich the pan american artistic landscape. Using their bodies as vehicles of expression the selected artists address critical and essential southamerican issues, such as political turmoil, social inequality, gender, cultural trauma, and more. The purpose of this cycle is to highlight the power of performance art as a vehicle for cultural preservation, resistance, and transformation. The cycle will emphasize the interrelated nature of Latin American artists and their diaspora, building a connection of narratives braided with strands of memory.
Argentina Performance Art (APA) is a platform dedicated to the study and practice of Performance Art in Argentina. APA aspires to conserve the intangible heritage of past performances imprinted in collective memory by compiling and analyzing historical archives and saving them from oblivion. Its goal is not only to save but to keep building a future archive of Latin American art memory and culture, highlighting current performative representations from a non-heteropatriarchal perspective.
The “South-American Performance Art” cycle at @TeatroaLatea (Nov. 2) & @GraceExhibitionSpace NY (Nov. 10 and Nov. 17) will feature live performances by Arantxa Araujo (Mexico / NYC), Pancho Lopez (Mexico / NYC) Natacha Voliakovsky (Argentina / NYC), Salome Egas (Ecuador / NYC), Anna Costa e Silva and Nina Terra (Brazil), Mana Bugallo (Argentina / NYC), Carolina Muñoz Awad (Chile / NYC, Domenica García (Ecuador / NYC) and Siri Gurudev (Colombia / Texas) and videos by Amapola Prada (Perú), Marta Minujin (Argentina) and Alfombra Roja (Perú).
For more info, visit https://www.argentinaperformanceart.com/ciclonyc
NATACHA VOLIAKOVSKY
Natacha Voliakovsky is an Argentinian performance artist based in New York. For over a decade, her pieces aimed to unveil and question social inequality, body autonomy and freedom.
Natacha’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries all around the world including: The Momentary Museum, Arkansas; the Museum of American Art, Arizona; The Center for Performance Research, New York; and Usina del Arte in Buenos Aires, among others. Additionally, she created NVMethod, a training technique for performance art, and is the director of Argentina Performance Art, the first research platform on performance art in Argentina.
PERFORMERS
Carolina Muñoz Awad (Chile/NYC)
carolina muñoz awad is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Santiago, Chile, in 1993. She has a background in architecture and science, previous to her studies in Fine Arts at Parsons, New York, which she completed in 2022. Her practice focuses mainly on the questioning of her human body in space and what different environments and materials provoke. carolina has used her own body as the main experimental subject since 2020 and has shown her installation and performance work in Santiago, New York, and Albany. She is interested in the raw perception through our senses and in the abstraction of improvised and instant reactions in the physical and emotional realm. carolina’s work interweaves English and Spanish language, as it deals with her presence in society; as a feminist, queer, migrant body–one that lives in a continent called America, and in a country that might never allow her to be called American.
Domenica García (Ecuador)
Doménica García is an Ecuadorian multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work delves into a process of introspection, exploring the personal and discovering the universal. With the use of a hyperbolic language and the juxtaposition of the radical with the ordinary, she gives greater relevance to the day-to-day experience. García’s multimedia approach, particularly merging performance and digital art, allows her to manipulate the perception of reality, facilitating a fantastic and surreal experience within the rational world.
Siri Gurudev (Colombia/Texas)
siri g is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, scholar, and ritual maker from Bogotá, Colombia, occupied Muisca territory. siri explores the meaning of being incarnated in a "human" body via thought, performance art, and spiritual healing practices.
GRACE UNDERGROUND: ACTION ON ACTIONS
ACTION ON ACTIONS #3
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2023
4:00 – 6:00 PM Free + snacks & beverages provided
ACTION ON ACTIONS is an opportunity for conversations on performance art that move beyond our Friday nights’ to a more expanded discussion, featuring various guest artists with presentations, workshops and in-progress short performances.
AGENDA:
4:00 Meet performance artists participating in South American Performance Art
4:30-5:30 Short Performances
5:30 Presentation by Jill McDermid
Our question is: “What is Performance art?”
South American Artists curated by NATACHA VOLIAKOVSKY
South-American Performance Art cycle @ New York City
The “South-American Performance Art” cycle @ New York City is a three-night program organized and curated by Argentina Performance Art (APA), founded by Argentinian performance artist Natacha Voliakovsky.
This cycle transcends Argentine borders to enrich the pan american artistic landscape. Using their bodies as vehicles of expression the selected artists address critical and essential southamerican issues, such as political turmoil, social inequality, gender, cultural trauma, and more. The purpose of this cycle is to highlight the power of performance art as a vehicle for cultural preservation, resistance, and transformation. The cycle will emphasize the interrelated nature of Latin American artists and their diaspora, building a connection of narratives braided with strands of memory.
Argentina Performance Art (APA) is a platform dedicated to the study and practice of Performance Art in Argentina. APA aspires to conserve the intangible heritage of past performances imprinted in collective memory by compiling and analyzing historical archives and saving them from oblivion. Its goal is not only to save but to keep building a future archive of Latin American art memory and culture, highlighting current performative representations from a non-heteropatriarchal perspective.
The “South-American Performance Art” cycle at @TeatroaLatea (Nov. 2) & @GraceExhibitionSpace NY (Nov. 10 and Nov. 17) will feature live performances by Arantxa Araujo (Mexico / NYC), Pancho Lopez (Mexico / NYC) Natacha Voliakovsky (Argentina / NYC), Salome Egas (Ecuador / NYC), Anna Costa e Silva and Nina Terra (Brazil), Mana Bugallo (Argentina / NYC), Carolina Muñoz Awad (Chile / NYC, Domenica García (Ecuador / NYC) and Siri Gurudev (Colombia / Texas) and videos by Amapola Prada (Perú), Marta Minujin (Argentina) and Alfombra Roja (Perú).
For more info, visit https://www.argentinaperformanceart.com/ciclonyc
NATACHA VOLIAKOVSKY (CURATOR)
Natacha Voliakovsky is an Argentinian performance artist based in New York. For over a decade, her pieces aimed to unveil and question social inequality, body autonomy and freedom.
Natacha’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries all around the world including: The Momentary Museum, Arkansas; the Museum of American Art, Arizona; The Center for Performance Research, New York; and Usina del Arte in Buenos Aires, among others. Additionally, she created NVMethod, a training technique for performance art, and is the director of Argentina Performance Art, the first research platform on performance art in Argentina.
PERFORMERS
Salome Egas (Ecuador / NYC)
SALOMÉ EGAS is proudly Ecuadorian: an interdisciplinary performer, arts educator and children’s books author who is permanently questioning her identity through multiple mediums: dance, theater, film and textile arts.
This year (2023), she’s a NYFA NYC Women’s Fund Recipient and The Opportunity Agenda’s Narrative Innovators Lab Fellow for her multidisciplinary project “Más que un Pétalo.” In 2022, she was a Brooklyn Arts Council grantee and an American Immigration Council fellow.
As a solo performer, she incorporates radical self-love and indigenization as tools to empower the ancestral knowledge carried by immigrant and femme bodies of color.
Salomé has performed nationally at several venues in NYC; and internationally in Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina and Canada. Salomé attended Creative Capital’s Latinx Workshop (2020), EmergeNYC (2018), obtained a Master’s from NYU(2018) and graduated from Skidmore College (2014). salomeegas.com
Anna Costa e Silva and Nina Terra (Brasil)
Anna Costa e Silva (Rio de Janeiro, 1988) works with constructed situations between people that challenge the limits between reality and fiction, self and other, experience and memory. Her projects happen in the intersections between visual, performing arts and social practice and unfold in installations, films, or ephemeral situations. Anna has won awards such as FOCO ArtRio, American Austrian Award for Fine Arts and was a PIPA prize nominee. In 2022, she was part of the Mercosul Biennial and winner of Terremoto Ubisoft artist residency and Franklin Furnace Grant. Her work has been shown at BienalSur (Buenos Aires), Art in Odd Places (NY), Pivô, Centro Cultural Hélio Oiticica, Oi Futuro, A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro), Ruby Cruel (London) Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius) among others and is part of public collections such as Rio de Janeiro Museum of Art. She teaches ArtLife Practices at Parque Lage School of Visual Arts.
Nina Terra is a Brazilian artist-therapist who lives in the city of Paraty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Psychologist, Art Therapist, graduated in dance at Angel Vianna, Yoga instructor, specialist in Cooperation Pedagogy and Collaborative Methodologies. Creator of the Oracle Body, Creative Power Body and DANCE-RITO practices. She has been singing for over 12 years and practices body-voice connection. She facilitates experiences of connection, awareness and expansion. She creates relational artistic performances and rituals that explore the state of flow, body-voice and the present moment.
Mana Bugallo (Argentina / NYC)
Mana Bugallo is an Argentinian performance poet, singer, and writer based in Bushwick. Her work combines poetry, satire, and music and is now focused on the individual and collective consequences of what we had been told is normal. She created and performed her last two shows called Dónde (Where) and El País de las Cosas while navigating the challenges of living far away from home. Mana has performed at poetry and comedy festivals, book fairs, and basements in the United States, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Uruguay, and Switzerland. She’s a founding member of the duo Boca de Buzón, with Paula Maffia, and the artistic collective Sucede. She was also among the first to organize poetry slams in Buenos Aires. Mana has lived in El País de las Cosas since 2018.
WOMEN OF RIVINGTON SCHOOL - Curated by Angel Eydealism
“It's not WHO you did at Rivington School, it's WHAT you did. WORS: Women Of Rivington School is to honor the women who contributed painting, sculpting, photography, and performance at to this now-famous art movement. There was a fair amount of "hanging out," rampant drug use, and a whole lotta fucking going on. However WORS is dedicated to the women who actually made and displayed their art at the few small galleries, and Sculpture Gardens in the Lower East Side of NYC from 1983 to present…”
Most of the galleries are now gone, except for Shalom Neuman's Fusion Arts, now called Womb Space at 57 Stanton Street. The Sculpture Gardens were all removed from the abandoned lots in the Nineties. Rivington School was a macho, Boomer male art scene, however there were a few women who stood out, with outstanding art. WORS is dedicated to honoring and showcasing these women artists and their art.” - ANGEL EYEDEALISM
We’re proud to present WORS: WOMEN OF RIVINGTON SCHOOL for two nights in the month of October. Curated by Angel Eyedealism, we’re providing a platform for the women involved with the creations and performance art of Rivington School.
Presenting artists include:
Theresa Rodriques
Sylvia Bullett
Rachelle Garniez aka Planetella
Angel Eyedealism aka Angela Repellant
JD Fleishman
Nick Demopolus
Stuart Ginsberg
Clayton Patterson
Jim C
Al Diaz
Find more info on WORS at https://www.womenofrivingtonschool.com/about
ABOUT ANGEL EYEDEALISM
“In 2015, I started WORS: Women Of Rivington School to honor the women who also contributed to the macho Boomer male art movement. With the massive media attention I have garnered as an astrologer, I want to shine a light on these brilliant, yet hidden jewels, I espied amidst the junk and rubble of Rivington School. WORS is the view of the Rivington School through my eyes and the few women I knew who painted, performed and stood out as rare gems, in this thrilling and dangerous time.”
Internationally renowned astrologer Angel Eyedealism, is based in the East Village, Manhattan. She is also a stratospheric coloratura and performance artist and brings a theatrical bent to her the practical, down-to-earth advice.
PERFORMING ARTISTS:
RACHELLE GARNIEZ
Native New Yorker, multi-instrumentalist Rachelle Garniez has been described as a “diva with a difference” (Billboard Magazine) and a “certified free spirit” (The New Yorker).
Rachelle recently appeared on the HBO television programs “High Maintenance” and “And Just Like That”; her songs can be heard on several film soundtracks and have been recorded by artists including Catherine Russell, Karen Elson, and Ingrid Lucia of the Flying Neutrinos.
She was a performing member as well as a musical director of the Neo- Cabaret troupe, The Citizens Band. For several years in the early 2000s, Rachelle was a member of the TED house band led by Thomas Dolby; she was invited in 2019 to perform at a reunion of hand-picked TED alumni.
She’s performed/recorded with artists including Sven Ratzke, Weimar New York, the Marvin Sewell Group, Tigresa, Rufus Wainwright, Dan Zanes, and Mumbo Gumbo. In 2009, Rachelle composed the music for Taylor Mac’s visionary Obie-Award-winning epic five-hour theater piece “The Lily’s Revenge”.
THERESA RODRIGUEZ
“I was born and raised in NYC. Presently my artwork is mixed media collages with photographs, silkscreen, and acrylic with found objects. From 1985 to the present I am a Woman of Rivington School.” - TR
WOMEN OF RIVINGTON SCHOOL - Curated by Angel Eydealism
“It's not WHO you did at Rivington School, it's WHAT you did. WORS: Women Of Rivington School is to honor the women who contributed painting, sculpting, photography, and performance at to this now-famous art movement. There was a fair amount of "hanging out," rampant drug use, and a whole lotta fucking going on. However WORS is dedicated to the women who actually made and displayed their art at the few small galleries, and Sculpture Gardens in the Lower East Side of NYC from 1983 to present…”
Most of the galleries are now gone, except for Shalom Neuman's Fusion Arts, now called Womb Space at 57 Stanton Street. The Sculpture Gardens were all removed from the abandoned lots in the Nineties. Rivington School was a macho, Boomer male art scene, however there were a few women who stood out, with outstanding art. WORS is dedicated to honoring and showcasing these women artists and their art.” - ANGEL EYEDEALISM
We’re proud to present WORS: WOMEN OF RIVINGTON SCHOOL for two nights in the month of October. Curated by Angel Eyedealism, we’re providing a platform for the women involved with the creations and performance art of Rivington School.
PERFORMANCE ARTISTS:
Theresa Rodrigues
Rachelle Garniez aka Planetella
Angel Eyedealism aka Angela Repellant
JD Fleishman aka Jill125
Melanie Tomsky
MUSIC BY:
Nick Demopolus
PRESENTING IN TRIBUTE:
Monty Cantsin (tribute to Little Alexis)
Stuart Ginsberg (tribute to Arleen Schloss)
Jim C (Video Montage Tribute to Monica/Missunderstood, Christa Camper, and Anne Jepsen)
Find more info on WORS at https://www.womenofrivingtonschool.com/about
ABOUT ANGEL EYEDIALISM
“In 2015, I started WORS: Women Of Rivington School to honor the women who also contributed to the macho Boomer male art movement. With the massive media attention I have garnered as an astrologer, I want to shine a light on these brilliant, yet hidden jewels, I espied amidst the junk and rubble of Rivington School. WORS is the view of the Rivington School through my eyes and the few women I knew who painted, performed and stood out as rare gems in this thrilling and dangerous time.”
Internationally renowned astrologer Angel Eyedealism, is based in the East Village, Manhattan. She is also a stratospheric coloratura and performance artist and brings a theatrical bent to her the practical, down-to-earth advice.
PERFORMERS
JD FLEISHMAN
JD Fleishman is a Multi-disciplinary Performance Artist hailing from Plexus, Dada, and Arte d'Povera. As a Tantric Shaman, she explores healing through sound, effortlessly creating Lucid Dreaming with singing bowls and gongs. She exhibited her visual and Performance Art in solo shows at Nada, and Freddie The Dreamer Galleries, as well as group shows at No Se No.This WORS is in Collections at MOMA and Gemente, Netherlands, and privately with Mike Bidlo, and Donald Baechler.
THERESA RODRIGUES
“I was born and raised in NYC. Presently my artwork is mixed media collages with photographs, silkscreen, and acrylic with found objects. From 1985 to the present I am a Woman of Rivington School.” - TR
MELANIE TOMSKY
Melanie Tomsky is a multi-disciplinary artist from Brooklyn, New York. She has performed in various classical music ensembles as a violist throughout the US and Europe. She is also a classically trained pianist. Tomsky’s expressionist paintings have been exhibited in several galleries in NYC. Melanie is also a performance artist and model.
PRESENTERS: 15 MINUTES OF FAME, HONORING FALLEN WORS
JIM C
Jim C. burst upon the East Village/ LES scene in 1983. His radical sense of experimentation - collapsing video, sound, painting, and photography together - blurring the boundaries between artistic disciplines - define his oeuvre. Jim ran The Magic Gallery with the painter, Edward Brezinski. Jim’s video of the scene are featured in the documentary Make Me Famous. In 1984 Jim then opened the Nada Gallery, 40 Rivington Street. Nada was at the hub of the notorious Rivington School. Jim now lives and works in Woodstock, New York.
“Immersive 8”- Live Art Tour Curated by cai qing
“Performance art is a spontaneous and unique form of artistic expression created by artists using their bodies and wisdom at a specific time and place. Its ephemeral nature makes it a one-of-a-kind experience that cannot be replicated, which is what makes it so special. For the 8th Annual Live Art Tour, we are excited to showcase this exciting and dynamic art form in vibrant and colorful New York City.
To create according to local conditions, artists will choose locations and venues that suit their unique styles, and immediately communicate with curators to organize and record their works on site. This approach not only expresses the richness and depth of Greater New York as an art center, but also highlights the unique method of performance art creation. It will provide performing artists from all over the world with the opportunity to unleash their unique energy.” - CAI QING (Curator)
Founder and curator Cai Qing [China/Germany] has gathered performance artists from around the world to immerse themselves and their art in the streets, parks and spaces in a different international city each year. This year, GES has invited Cai Qing and the curated artists to bring their vision to New York City for the first time. NYC is a stage for life, life/art, and art/life, that allows the artists to perform site-specific works at GES and on the streets, alleys and spaces throughout NYC.
The IMMERSIVE 8 Festival reacts not only to the richness and depth of Greater New York as a center for the arts, but also highlights the distinct and creative methods of performance art - with Week #3 live performance art pieces by: Cai Qing, Arahmaiani Feisal, Gao Zhiyan, and Kuan Ying-Chen.
ABOUT CAI QING
Cai Qing, PhD, was born in China and is currently a German citizen, artist, curator and art critic who is active in the field of contemporary art and performance art.
He is also involved in education at fine-art academies, leading workshops and teaching courses in contemporary art.
PERFORMERS
ARAHMAIANI FEISAL
Born in 1961 (Bandung, Indonesia) Feisal is an artist, activist, poet and writer.She has long been internationally recognized for her powerful commentaries on social, political, cultural and environmental issues. And has been working as a guest lecture in Passau University, Germany in the last 10 years (teaching every summer semester – except 2020-2021 just do it online). She also used to teach in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (2006-2008). Her own identity as Muslim mediates between Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and animist beliefs. She has been working with communities dealing with environmental, social-political and cultural issue in Indonesia and abroad. Creating a long term community base art project called “Flag Project” since 2006 (she has been working with Islamic boarding school community in Yogyakarta). Then working with various community in Indonesia and abroad. And since 2010 she has been working with Tibetan monks & the lay people in Tibet Plateau dealing with environmental issue till today.
GAO ZHIYAN
Gao Zhiyan (English translation: Grace), also known as Gao Ya and Mr. Ya. Artist, poet, and freelance art creator. She has participated in exhibitions in New York, Italy, South Korea, Turkey, and Zhuhai, Beijing, and Shanghai in China. she has had two solo exhibitions. Her works involve painting, installation, performance, poetry, and commentary. multiple fields.
KUAN-YING CHEN
Kuan-Ying Chen was born in Keelung, Taiwan, in 1989, is currently an artist and doctoral student at the Institute of Art Creation and Theory, National Tainan University of the Arts. Focusing on social culture and public issues, Kuan-Ying is obsessed with several problems: the relationship between art and political power of environment, the interaction of fine art and the public, and how the art turn on new dialogue, either inside or outside the system. Through diving into the very bottom of the society, he discovered the possibility and ruminant of creativity, where people input publicity and dialogue. (Delete it according to your needs)
Ivo Ivanov (Bulgaria)
Ivo Ivanov is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural manager based in Sofia, Bulgaria. His interests and education are in text, theatre, performance, sound and image manipulation and digital art. Collaboration and understanding artistic thought flow and practice is one of his life’s main objectives. As is presenting contemporary art and independent culture to broader audiences.
He has been playing and making music professionally since the end of the last century. Under the moniker Yves O, he experiments with live visuals since 2005. Award-winning artist and participant in numerous events and festivals on several continents.
Co-founder of Studio Dauhaus, one of the first independent art spaces. Curator and organizer of some of the most avant-garde events in Bulgaria, among which is the Sofia Underground international performance art festival.
“Immersive” - Live Art Tour 8 Curated by cai qing
“Performance art is a spontaneous and unique form of artistic expression created by artists using their bodies and wisdom at a specific time and place. Its ephemeral nature makes it a one-of-a-kind experience that cannot be replicated, which is what makes it so special. For the 8th Annual Live Art Tour, we are excited to showcase this exciting and dynamic art form in vibrant and colorful New York City.
To create according to local conditions, artists will choose locations and venues that suit their unique styles, and immediately communicate with curators to organize and record their works on site. This approach not only expresses the richness and depth of Greater New York as an art center, but also highlights the unique method of performance art creation. It will provide performing artists from all over the world with the opportunity to unleash their unique energy.” - CAI QING (Curator)
Founder and curator Cai Qing [China/Germany] has gathered performance artists from around the world to immerse themselves and their art in the streets, parks and spaces in a different international city each year. This year, GES has invited Cai Qing and the curated artists to bring their vision to New York City for the first time. NYC is a stage for life, life/art, and art/life, that allows the artists to perform site-specific works at GES and on the streets, alleys and spaces throughout NYC.
The IMMERSIVE 8 Festival reacts not only to the richness and depth of Greater New York as a center for the arts, but also highlights the distinct and creative methods of performance art - with Week #1 live performance art pieces by: Paul Reagan [Ireland], Beate Linne [Germany], Gaby Bila-Günther aka LADY GABY [Australia/Romania] and Tim Martin-Jones [UK].
ABOUT CAI QING
Cai Qing, PhD, was born in China and is currently a German citizen, artist, curator and art critic who is active in the field of contemporary art and performance art.
He is also involved in education at fine-art academies, leading workshops and teaching courses in contemporary art.
PERFORMERS
PAUL REGAN
Born in Dublin in 1970, Paul Regan has a background in painting. Completed MA in Visual Arts Practices at IADT and since 2016, has focused on live performance as a vehicle to explore themes pertaining to faith, ritual and cultural [mis]identities through site-specific actions and interventions.
BEATTE LINNE
Beate Linne, born in Germany is an interdisciplinary artist who works in the fields of
performance art, video performance, sound, and installation.
Linne’s art has been presented in museums, galleries, and festivals internationally.
In addition to this, she has been the co-curator of several international performance art
festivals and is the founder of the association no w here, which aims to promote art in rural
areas and to network internationally. She lives and works in Berlin.
LADY GABY
Gaby Bila-Günther, aka Lady Gaby is a Berlin-based spoken word & performance AND visual artist who was labelled ‘the Peaches of spoken word’ in Berlin, ‘oddly poetic’ and ‘flamboyant and upbeat’ by The Age paper in Melbourne , “story teller extraordinaire by The Melbourne Times, 'A true artist ahead of Berlin' by journalist Nadja Sayej and 'provocative' by The Pill in Prague; blushing she asks - why?
Presently, she hosts The WORD BANK Radio show, a monthly live radio broadcast in Wedding, and the event The POETIC GROOVE, a night of performance artists and musicians fuse on stage. LADY GABY performs with the feminist, queer and burlesque show, The Cunt LAB.
Lady Gaby is part of the international performance artist feminist Berlin based group, NORMATIVE GAZE IN PERFORMANCE ART and The Domestic MAPPING as well as performer and member in the collective, The POETRY BROTHEL BERLIN.
TIM-MARTIN JONES
Tim Martin-Jones is an emergent artist, poet, and facilitator working primarily through performance and writing. Based in Cardiff, Wales, he received his MA in Performance Practice as Research from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University ofLondon.
Drawing from his own lived experiences of body-chaos, he aims to question what it is our bodies can do through movement and tension. His practice experiments with embodied
philosophies, focussing on bodies that are placed into an ‘out of spaceness’. Recent explorations have been concerned with precarity, locating the body within an unsteady
mimesis, where the boundaries between representation and the Real blur.
As a teenager he was diagnosed with epilepsy, the experience of seizures over his adolescence giving rise to a curiosity of the relationship between the mind and the body, and the synthesizing of the two. Tim seeks to explore what affects are produced when we encounter another body through performance, and how this alters, interrogates, and
ultimately enhances the relationships we hold with our own bodies.
Tim has staged both solo and collaborative work in theatres, industrial basements, empty shopping units, and car parks. He is a member of Wales based performance collective
SCORE.
OPEN SEASON - CRACKHEAD BARNEY AND FRIENDS
FALL 2023 OPENING NIGHT - HOSTED BY CRACKHEAD BARNEY AND FRIENDS!!
We’re kicking off our Fall 2023 season with a night of pure chaos trash maximalism. The notorious Crackhead Barney will present a variety of performances by Brei Frei, MangoWorld, and Jacob Cohen, Contessa Stuto, as well as a debut screening of her VICE documentary.
Show starts at 8. Tickets sold at door and online.
ABOUT CRACKHEAD BARNEY
“Crackhead Barney is an anomaly, a coward, a harlot, a whore, and a sidepiece! She or he doesn’t know what the fuck she is doing half the fucking time and you know it and I know it! Shit writing this right here just proves it! But who Gives a FUCK! You don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a FUCK and neither do you! I just flailing my Ass, pUSSY, and Tits around because they are big enough to be in everybody’s faces?
Crackheadbarney is not a performer, not a loud mouth, not a provocateur, is bad with words and has no business performing in the streets of NYC!” - CHB
PERFORMERS
BREI FREI
Bronx native BriFrei is a performative creator driven by spiritual expansion. Her art is often used as a vehicle to transport individuals to a destination of ‘no limitations’ challenging ones current or past views of societal norms. BriFrei uses their performance art practice as a means to maintain physical spiritual and mental health. Her whimsical & tragic acts take the witness on a wild yet healing trip.
CONTESSA STUTO
Contessa Stuto is an American artist, musician, and performer. She is based in Brooklyn, New York. Stuto is the founding member of Cunt Mafia, a queer feminist art collective, as well as an indelible figure of Brooklyn’s underground nightlife scene. Stuto is a self-described “extreme feminist” and an advocate of female empowerment. Her music is one of a kind and unique alternative music mixed with hip-hop. She is a pioneer of Trap Metal as well.
MANGODOG
Mangodog is an artist/producer currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from Florida and raised in Trinidad, his years of time playing in bands over the years and studying sound has helped him to be fully self-produced. He draws inspiration from post punk, rap, hardcore, and jazz to carefully craft a unique sound based on energy.
JACOB COHEN
Jacob Cohen is a Brooklyn based experimental cellist and visual artist. From 2011–2016 he earned a living performing in the New York City subways, developing a unique style that has grown out of a frustration with traditional cello music and a complementary love of improvisation and performance. In 2014 he won the Transform Today contest sponsored by Absolut Vodka, which led to the creation of Cello Without Walls, in which he has been performing and conducting music and art workshops in prisons and jails throughout the northeastern United States. In 2015 Cello Without Walls was sponsored by Friends of Island Academy, a non-profit organization based in Harlem that provides services to young adults incarcerated on Rikers Island as well as transitional services upon their release, and was awarded a grant from the Vogler Foundation to create a music program for youth at Rikers Island’s Robert N. Davoren Complex. In 2016 Cello Without Walls was awarded funding from the Department of Corrections to expand into the George Motchen Detention Center for young adults and the Rose M. Singer Center for women. In addition to playing music with the participants he began sketching the daily lives of the people incarcerated on Rikers Island awaiting trial. The style of drawing quickly began to develop and the drawings became popular and sought after within the jail. He continues to work with youth at Rikers Island and runs a free recording studio in Harlem for those returning to the community.
FOLLOW THE MACHINE: MULTIMEDIA EXHIBITION BY PIXEL MOUTH
FOLLOW THE MACHINE - EXHIBITION BY PIXEL MOUTH
Follow the Machine is a multimedia exhibition + show exploring how putting our utmost faith into machines is helping/\hurting us.
The power dynamics between user and machine have become unclear - constantly reversing roles between servant and master. What happens when we let go of our own knowledge and Follow the Machine? The machines are often functioning at a different level from our own understanding, being both literal and proverbial black boxes whose inner workings are too complex to understand. From our perspective, the output of the machine is seemingly random, and why it chooses what it does is almost divine.
The Mandarin character for “randomness” can be directly translated to “Follow the Machine”, trusting that the machine has the answer to whatever question we have, the machine itself has become a modern oracle.
Follow the Machine is the highly anticipated third show presented by //PIXELMOUTH. Join us in following the 1s and 0s, wherever they may lead.
Doors at 7:30, show at 8. Pay-what-you-can, in advance or at the door.
about pixel mouth
//PIXELMOUTH is an art collective founded by four New York-based digital artists of multiple disciplines. We aim to merge the chaotic digital fringes into unified shows. The skills of people working in tech should not be solely reserved for business. We bring together digital performance art, hardware creation, and software manipulation to recontextualize our relationship with the world around us.
ENDOFTHEBENDER - Debut performance by Failure Egg (CLOSING CELEBRATION)
endofthebender (Closing celebration for spring series 2023)
debut performance by failure egg
ENDOFTHEBENDER is the debut performance by Failure Egg. This story tells the story of urbanization from the perspective of the emergent ecosystem that survives in its fringes. Using motion-capture we animated a cast of characters within our virtual world: a radiation-consuming bacteria experiences an existential crisis, an algal bloom sings a love song about living at the expense of others, a treehopper insect exists in a perpetual state of mutation, an unspecified spore on an infinite journey, and a gasoline dissolving bacteria grieves a future age when all the petroleum oil is gone.
ABOUT FAILURE EGG
Failure Egg are a mutli-disicplinary collaborative group co-founded by 3D digital artist Rob Ruth, musician/multimedia artist Jack Helfrich, and performance/land-artist Jemila MacEwan. We tell stories about interspecies acts of resistance and survival within traumatized ecosystems. We look to vulnerable yet enduring survivors of planetary transformation who testify how improvisation, mutation and hybridization dissolve notions of hierarchy, species distinction, and individuality. This ethos is the foundation to our collaborative process for creating multimedia works that intermesh digital animation, film, dance, writing, music, fashion and motion capture technology to tell stories of life and evolution on the frontlines of ecological catastrophe. Nuclear exclusion zones, feral urban ecosystems, doomsday vaults, and islands of trash are all in our conceptual and creative crosshairs.
Cumulatively members of Failure Egg have been invited to perform and exhibit internationally including at; ARoS Museum (Denmark), The Australian Consulate-General, Pioneer Works, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, ZeroSpace, T293 Gallery (Italy), SOF:Art (Italy), SXSW, Skaftfell Center, (Iceland), and KZM Center for Art Media (Germany).
SPRING SERIES: RAIN, CLOUDS, UNICORNS, AND RAINBOWS
Spring 2023: Rain, Clouds, Unicorns, and Rainbows
“My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and onn. . . It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.” - Excerpt From: Ross Gay. “Inciting Joy.”
Particles of water or ice are suspended in the air, become submerged into one another until they are too big to float, and fall to the ground as rain, snow, sleet, hail drizzle, cats and dogs, and liquid sunshine until all of life depends on the resulting fresh water. Rain is changing too and, like clouds, is in abundance or scarce.
Then there is a rainbow! Sometimes even two! Suddenly there is magic in the air as the full spectrum of light shines back down on us. Rainbows seem invisible, like to magic of unicorns, until we find them, and when we see them, they see us.
Spring 2023 at Grace Exhibition Space: We are expressing the multitude of rain and clouds and unicorns and rainbows that allow us to find the resulting joy.
PERFORMANCES
LABOR - Maira Duarte/Dance To the People
'Mold Sessions : It's in the Air' - Alex Romania ft. Stacy lynn smith and shane jones
Welcome to
your vacation
apocalypse
come get some
So like
belief
a fog
a syllable
a murmur
not quite dominating
and pleasantly apathetic
it blinks
Staying small
Not rushing at all
Knife dancing
in the static of the TV light
exploding frogs
and handstands to the moon
The dead flowers
are actually the next
TRANCE ARCHETYPE - STORM HARTLEY
“Through the chaos of consumption form is ingested and regurgitated in cycles. In times of such contradicting harmony, a synthesis occurs between rationality and irrationality. If one can see that existence is a simulation - a portal opens to access a realm of sacred emancipation. Pierce through the veil and witness an unhindered emotional nature. The potential of the human subconscious is a hypnotic projection. Through mobilizing our bones we dismantle constructions, shuddering foundations with cataclysmic surges of emotion. I perceive movement as a mechanism to seek liberation from the bondage of flesh, entranced within the art of dissolving with sacred sound and breath.“
Heart 2 Heart - Deeppond kim
“…Dissecting social structure and re-building environments which reference my own character is the underlying theme of my work. I use clay sculptures to create disembodied fragments of ourselves which delicately provoke eerie emotions, where the familiar is presented in an abstract and unfamiliar way. My mission is to transform the body in a disorienting manner and to build awareness about how we see ourselves and others, and provide a thinking space to reimagine humanity and re-evaluate our own place in the world.” - DeepPond Kim
PERFORMERS
MAIRA DUARTE
is a Mexican artist, educator, and organizer. Maira makes work through Dance to the People, an evolving collective whose mission is to generate opportunities for artistic exchange and foster projects that value process over product. DTTP holds the principles of collaboration, autonomy, horizontality, intersectional feminism, collective care, and proposing over imposing. DTTP uses dance, ritual, environmental education and costume making to investigate issues of abuse and exploitation of peoples and natural environments. By transforming discarded objects through performance and dance forms rooted in indigenous traditions, we illustrate value in materials, and draw a parallel to the value of life in the face of the extractive, invasive, and destructive hegemony of global capitalism.
ALEX ROMANIA
is a multidisciplinary artist who has held residencies with Movement Research, MacDowell, and Djerassi. He has upcoming projects premiering in spaces including Chocolate Factory Theater (CF), CPR, and the Performance Mix Festival .
In addition to creating their own original work, Romania has performed in the work of Kathy Westwater since 2013 and has been featured in the work of Antonio Ramos, Simone Forti, Éva Mag and Eddie Peake. Romania has worked in various collaborative filmmaking roles such as designer of live video for their live works as well as works by Christopher Unpezverde Nuñez, Antonio Ramos, Martita Abril, Maira Duarte, contributing editor on ‘Star No Star’ by Sarah White-Ayòn, assistant editor for ‘My So-Called Selfish Life’ by Trixie Films, and cinematographer and editor on multiple shorts by TAAMAS.
STORM HARTLEY
Introducing Storm Willow Hartley, known in the otherworld as KĀ. Shifting betwixt an extensive array of Interdisciplinary archetypes, Storm summons presence with a force that beckons to be reckoned with. Globally engaged in visionary experiments caressing the corners of Johannesburg to Berlin and New York City, Storm’s roots are embedded within cathartic underground crevices, entangled within the finer institutions, consistently rising to unite with the crown of the higher dimensions. As an avid activator in electronic music and radical gathering, adjacent with facilitating in the healing arts, a recent BFA degree under the belt ignites an undeniably enticing immersion into this next cycle of creation. The channel is open, trusting resonance even more than ever.
Notable showcases in institutions such as LaMaMa, Judson Memorial Church, Grace Exhibition Space (NYC), And Club.(ZA) Storm is the co-founder of the creative arts incubator UN/ @un.biome .
DEEPPOND KIM
Recently selected as one of the top 8 finalists in the world for the MTV RE: DEFINE Award, DeepPond’s work has an eerie disturbing quality which blurs the lines between fiction and reality, between humor and horror. Originally from South Korea, DeepPond graduated from Incheon Art High School and obtained a BFA at Sungshin Women’s University in 2014 where she studied a broad range of creative mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance. All of her work provokes a new sense of awareness and questions the authenticity and the limitations of established social structures. Her work reflects a subtle sense of anxiety, where she turns the world upside down twisting what’s familiar into a web of ironic, disturbing, and amusing emotions, inviting people into her world.
SPRING SERIES: RAIN, CLOUDS, UNICORNS, AND RAINBOWS
BUY TICKETS HERE
Spring 2023: Rain, Clouds, Unicorns, and Rainbows
“My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and onn. . . It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.” - Excerpt From: Ross Gay. “Inciting Joy.”
Particles of water or ice are suspended in the air, become submerged into one another until they are too big to float, and fall to the ground as rain, snow, sleet, hail drizzle, cats and dogs, and liquid sunshine until all of life depends on the resulting fresh water. Rain is changing too and, like clouds, is in abundance or scarce.
Then there is a rainbow! Sometimes even two! Suddenly there is magic in the air as the full spectrum of light shines back down on us. Rainbows seem invisible, like to magic of unicorns, until we find them, and when we see them, they see us.
Spring 2023 at Grace Exhibition Space: We are expressing the multitude of rain and clouds and unicorns and rainbows that allow us to find the resulting joy.
PERFORMANCES
"Next Performance 2023" - MIAO JIAXIN
The performance takes a glance at risk-free thoughts/talks/actions in arts and culture.
Reconflection - J ALEX RAY
J collects the souls of her audience and arranges them into a sculpture of themself.
Scary Monsters - and Hybrid Creeps - Alexander del re
Be Happy or Die is a performative installation exploration of the consequence of subtle or not aggressions of migration policies in Denmark on minorities, outcasts, different bodies and minds. Be Happy or Die is an electromagnetic field recording and narrative orchestra questioning our inner sensory censorship regarding liberty and freedom when articulated by happiness.
Be Happy or Die is a collective and tangible experience reflecting on the current pandemic—especially our new collective behaviours and our relationship with others.
'GRW/M - Get Ready With Monstera' - MONSTERA DELICIOSA
“Both intimate and public, both solipsistic and collective, both grand and anticlimactic, GRW/M is a polymorphous act of space contouring and self-sculpting. A score, a chore, an ambiguous litany - or lullaby - of pacing and (re)-tracing, indeed of making and un-making, between self-pampering and communal ritual. A caress, a scratch, a hymn, an epitaph. Elusive and seductive. Catch me if you can.”
PERFORMERS
MIAO JIAXIN
Beginning in Shanghai, where his photography works expressed the universal theme of urban angst, Miao immigrated to New York, expanding his view of urban streets towards a more conceptual public stage. Among his performative practices across different media, Miao has blended his naked body into the bleak streets of a midnight New York City, traveled inside a suitcase hauled by his mother through urban crowds, made live-feed erotic performances on an interactive pornographic broadcasting website, and dressed as a Chinese businessman for an entire year when working towards his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is more widely known for converting his New York studio into a jail and charging $1 per night as accommodation on Airbnb. The same studio later was converted again to be a blind dating (meeting) spot, as well as a massage therapy clinic. Miao’s works often express the ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic tension that always exists between the individual and governing or cultural authorities, questioning assumptions about power in relation to identity politics. He posits the artist’s nature as one who transgresses boundaries, challenges consensus, and stays distant from authorities.
J ALEX RAY
is a Brooklyn-based Californian movement artist. Originally a painter, Ray naturally gravitated toward self-portraiture and has since centered her work around “the self”. Although their body is the primary vehicle and inspiration for her work, they use dance, stillness, and general social distress to connect more vulnerably with her audience.
Ray is now better known for their pole dancing, as they’ve competed and performed in a variety of pole dance showcases throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Confronting the relationship between fear and intimacy as a means of self-governance and growth, J is eager to lead his audience toward deeper self reflection.
ALEXANDER DEL RE
is an educator, curator, organizer and performance artist for over 30 years; to this date he has presented his work in over 20 countries of Europe, Asia and the Americas.
He has been guest curator of the international performance art festivals“Interakcje”, in Poland and “Blow!” in Germany, and at “Grace Exhibition Space”, in New York, USA.
He has published extensively about the contemporary performance art scene of Chile and Latin America in magazines in the U.K., Japan and Canada; his work also has been featured in art magazines in Europe and America, as well as in the books “Performance y Arte-Acción en América Latina” (Mexico, 2005), and “Copying Eden, contemporary art in Chile” (Chile, 2006).
He was organizer and curator of the first international performance art festival in Santiago, Chile, called “Performare” in 1997. He was co-founder of PerfoPuerto, an independent performance art organization based in Chile, with which he organized 12 international performance art festivals from 2002-2008 in Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, presenting the work of over 120 artists from 30 countries worldwide. Currently he is co-founder and director of PerfoLink, Latin American platform for performance art; since 2009 he has curated and co-organized 20 international performance art festivals and many smaller events in Venezuela, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile, presenting the work of over 200 artists from 33 countries worldwide. In 2020, he curated and organized “CuerpAs International”, a live-online performance art festival streamed from a webinar platform (and simultaneously live on Perfolink’s YouTube channel), featuring women artists from all continents of the world, including the legendary durational performance artist, Linda Montano.
MONSTERA DELICIOSA
“I am no artist, but have inhabited spaces and practices that some would call artistic. A she-they kind of womxn, I live through the joys of trans-feminism, the perils of visibility and the paradoxes - physical and philosophical - that existing outside of the gender binary brings (boo to assimilation!).
My work endeavors to articulate this all - be it through the minutia of clapping sand out of my perspex heels onto a church pew, or the grandeur of climbing a building’s facade to reach for my lipstick, in a balancing act between endurance and elegance, compulsion and commotion.
Neither here nor there, but mostly all over, Monstera tries to unsettle what is perceived as spectacular, disappearing the durational into the liminal, collapsing the monumental into the ephemeral, melting the grand with the clumsy.
Hope you'll like her - if you hate her"
SPRING SERIES: RAIN, CLOUDS, UNICORNS, AND RAINBOWS
Spring 2023: Rain, Clouds, Unicorns and Rainbows
“My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and onn. . . It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.” - Excerpt From: Ross Gay. “Inciting Joy.”
Particles of water or ice are suspended in the air, become submerged into one another until they are too big to float, and fall to the ground as rain, snow, sleet, hail drizzle, cats and dogs, and liquid sunshine until all of life depends on the resulting fresh water. Rain is changing too and, like clouds, is in abundance or scarce.
Then there is a rainbow! Sometimes even two! Suddenly there is magic in the air as the full spectrum of light shines back down on us. Rainbows seem invisible, like to magic of unicorns, until we find them, and when we see them, they see us.
Spring 2023 at Grace Exhibition Space: We are expressing the multitude of rain and clouds and unicorns and rainbows that allow us to find the resulting joy.
BLACK AESTHETICS 4.0
BriFrei, Meadow Le Elle, Kagé, Pink Tacos, and Crackhead Barney will come together as individuals to accent and celebrate “Black Aesthetics’ in Grace Exhibition Space. Forming a collective for the night, the curated artists have unique expressions and practices blending sounds, vocals, performance, and fashion. Comprised of, but not limited to: dancers, punk vocalists, & rappers, these underground artists are rising to the possibilities.
PERFORMERS
BriFrei
Bronx native BriFreí is a performative creator driven by spiritual expansion. Using her performative art practice as a means to maintain physical spiritual and mental health, she creates space for free-flowing movement and intense vocalizations in her works. Art has become her catalyst for transmuting today’s sadness or rage into tomorrow’s imagined acts of love and liberation. Abandoning the idea of limitations, her performances are often fully drenched in her eccentric creations like her handmade garbs & accessories. Whether accompanied by instrumentalists or original sounds, BriFrei’s whimsical & tragic acts invite you on a wild healing experience.
Meadow Le Elle
Meadow Le'Elle is an American vagabond and seeker of obscure sounds. Inspired by their travel, they take the viewer and listener on an intimate journey of syncopated chaos; expressed through operatic punk vocals, textured electronic beats and wild interpretive dance.
Pink Tacos
A band, a brand. A representation of freedom and unity, a source of black empowerment, and a highlight for women being the garden of life. The combination of artistry Pink Tacos gather is a source of many different visual influences and genres. The vocalist duo “Proof and Yoda” use an orchestra of producers to get the unique sound they are searching for. Their sound called “rage” is similar to Xxxtentacion’s early releases. These students who mastered the craft and added their own presence to instrumentation are gifted. They’ve toured the east coast and made some stops along the west, and are currently playing locally and gaining traction for their next hit single.
Kagé
Kage is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York who believes art is a powerful means of communication. As a Black, queer, and autistic man, Kage's work is deeply rooted in his personal journey of self-discovery. He creates art that inspires confidence and comfort in the face of life's challenges, drawing on nostalgia and innovative techniques to produce unique and thought-provoking pieces.
Crackhead Barney
Crackheadbarney is an anomaly, a coward, a harlot, a whore, and a sidepiece! She or he doesn’t know
what the fuck she is doing half the fucking time and you know it and I know it! Shit writing this right here
just proves it! But who Gives a FUCK! You don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a FUCK and neither do you! I just
flailing my Ass, pUSSY, and Tits around because they are big enough to be in everybody’s faces?
Crackheadbarney is not a performer, not a loud mouth, not a provocateur, is bad with words and has
not business performing in the streets of NYC!
SPRING SERIES: RAIN, CLOUDS, UNICORNS, AND RAINBOWS
buy your tickets here
Spring 2023: Rain, Clouds, Unicorns, and Rainbows
“My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and onn. . . It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.” - Excerpt From: Ross Gay. “Inciting Joy.”
Particles of water or ice are suspended in the air, become submerged into one another until they are too big to float, and fall to the ground as rain, snow, sleet, hail drizzle, cats and dogs, and liquid sunshine until all of life depends on the resulting fresh water. Rain is changing too and, like clouds, is in abundance or scarce.
Then there is a rainbow! Sometimes even two! Suddenly there is magic in the air as the full spectrum of light shines back down on us. Rainbows seem invisible, like to magic of unicorns, until we find them, and when we see them, they see us.
Spring 2023 at Grace Exhibition Space: We are expressing the multitude of rain and clouds and unicorns and rainbows that allow us to find the resulting joy.
PERFORMANCES
"Strange Bird" Part 2, Verse 1: Doing great, for 23. - by Honey McMoney
“After ten years in New York City, I moved to New York City, still heading toward Utopia.” Upcycling the Strong Queer Energy of/through re-arrival with the shimmy shimmer of joyous (pro)vocation, of ruffling feathers and bells on the wind.
Untitled (for now…) - Joseph Sledgianowski not on anyone's side,
DEEP MOON, PLUTO, AQUARIUS - KUBA FALK
“We dive within to go outside…”
"We are not on anyone's side,
but our own"
The performer performs his "body-tale," finding himself with the audience on the set of an imaginary tesseract (a four-dimensional hypercube composed of eight cubical cells and vertices), using two monitors, video projection, sound and text.
This tale refers to the slow motion of Pluto, which in the convulsions of the earth's body brings pearls of light from its underground travels. The body, human flesh, melds with silicon technology. We view ourselves in the mirror of both the light and dark side of the moon. Craters of memories. Crumbling structures. Suits for interstellar travel woven from dark-light-matter of experienced emotions. Neurons connected to stars. From the open mouth of a dying Chronos emerges the face of the Great Mother.
ANTI-FERTILITY ritual - performance by Jamie and amanda
We love our children and want to do the best for them, create a place for them where they can thrive. And we believe we have succeeded! Created the perfect world for our babies to never have to die, never degrade, never be eaten. A world where they can grow without limitations and inherit the earth. Today we are celebrating the end of fertility! When nothing can be born again, nothing can die. We’ve finally ended death, ended the cycle of samsara, and we invite you to witness our utopia of abundance and eternal life.
performers
Honey McMoney
“Things I like: mystical experience, dance of life, imaginations are infinities, we are the leaky boundaries between infinities, how big is the inside? How spacious is this vessel? Inside this spacious skin sack? Leaking, seeping, constant threats of rupture - of what are we inside? Spacious sacks within spacious sacks. From somewhere on a whirling spheroid garden rock, the not-even-close-to-being-knowable, we (a mucus fleck), Leaking (with) - all of this - , to eat and excrete for a lifetime, and find wonder and joy and compassion in that.
Carnegie Hall ---> Yes
Art School ---> Nope
b. 1970 Upstate NY USA
Let the mind wander
This art is queer”
Joseph Sledgianowski
is a multimedia artist, working primarily in performance, sound, and mixed-medium visual and installation works. He was born in New Jersey, currently living in Ridgewood, Queens, NY.
A current major focus into perspectives of time and space, mental functioning, and continuous communication and miscomprehension.
Kuba Falk
“For me, performance is the most organic form of communication, so it is my main, though not the only, medium of work. It is also a low-carbon medium, which is not insignificant today. A public performance is usually preceded by a long process of exploring a given topic, during which drawings, musical pieces, videos and texts are created, which may later be incorporated into the show or constitute autonomous works. For a performance I prepare a structure, a kind of script, which I then fill in with individual elements, always leaving space for improvisation, that is, an energetic dialogue with the audience and the venue. I am interested in a lively connection, a direct and sincere presence with the audience, to whom I serve bizarre entertainment at high emotional frequencies, so that the body and intellectual mind have something to feed on.”
SPRING SERIES 2023: Opening night
BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE
Spring 2023: Rain, Clouds, Unicorns, and Rainbows
“My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and onn. . . It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.” - Excerpt From: Ross Gay. “Inciting Joy.”
Particles of water or ice are suspended in the air, become submerged into one another until they are too big to float, and fall to the ground as rain, snow, sleet, hail drizzle, cats and dogs, and liquid sunshine until all of life depends on the resulting fresh water. Rain is changing too and, like clouds, is in abundance or scarce.
Then there is a rainbow! Sometimes even two! Suddenly there is magic in the air as the full spectrum of light shines back down on us. Rainbows seem invisible, like to magic of unicorns, until we find them, and when we see them, they see us.
Spring 2023 at Grace Exhibition Space: We are expressing the multitude of rain and clouds and unicorns and rainbows that allow us to find the resulting joy.
PERFORMANCES:
“Thy Myopia of Desire” - a 3-day durational performance, film, and installation piece by Jamie Funk
“And if the opposite of desiring is boredom, where is loving? If the opposite of desiring is to be bored, what does it mean to love? ... If the opposite of being desired is to be boring, what does it mean to be loved? Or must we not speak of this wholly (holy?) other, intangible, gasping thing?
Functioning as a barrier to the desire of the gaze that never reaches its destination, the bed holds one at a distance. Physical distance may, however, be overcome, but emotional proximity remains noticeably, at times comfortably, absent.” Read more…
“Climate” - a 6-hour durational performance performed by Raegan Truax and GOODW.Y.N
Climate is a new durational performance created by Raegan Truax and GOODW.Y.N. As trans and gender variant people in the United States face the newest wave of attacks on genderfull life, the artists explore the limits and possibilities of co-creating a queer aerosphere. Beginning from a collective proposal to each other and the audience — “we are weathering”— the performance explores the various weather conditioning our climates. Read more…
Jamie Funk
Jamie Funk (b. 1997, Philadelphia, PA) is a multi-media artist with works converging video, sculpture, performance, and writing. Beginning from studying spatial, psychological, and philosophical research (either originating from others or from self-studies/reflections), Funk explores the body’s relation to space and to itself within the deeply personal subjects of sex work, addiction, queerness and BDSM.
Her work has been exhibited at the Mark Morris Dance Center, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, the William Way LGBT Community Center, House of Yes, and Spring Studios. Her writing has also appeared in Math Magazine, an international magazine that highlights the diversity of bodies and sexual desires. Funk’s work often centers around the body’s (both of herself and her audience) ever-shifting relation to space and to itself within the deeply personal subjects of sex work, addiction, queerness and BDSM.
https://www.thefunkportal.space/
Raegan Truax
Raegan Truax is a durational performer whose work explores new ways of being in relation to our bodies, the world, and each other.
In 2019, Truax began working on a series of 12+ hour performances conceptualized around public mourning and collective grief.
Truax is the curator of the ON DURATION performance platform which supports durational artists to work collaboratively and share their practice with one another and the public. ON DURATION highlights performance as an evolving axis of political, aesthetic, and creative possibility, and amplifies the precise skill sets of diverse durational practitioners in order to investigate how rearranging relationships to time, space, and body can unmake oppressive systems and structures.
GOODW.Y.N
Nicole Goodwin aka GOODW.Y.N. is the author of Warcries, and the poetic sequel Warcrimes. They are a finalist for the CUE Foundation’s 2022 Public Programs Fellowship, as well as the 2020 Pushcart Nominee, 2018-2019 Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient, the 2018 Ragdale Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship Recipient, 2017 EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute Fellow and the 2013- 2014 Queer Art Mentorship Queer Art Literary Fellow.
They published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” in the New York Times’ parentblog Motherlode. Additionally, their work “Ain’t I a Woman (?/!): Poems,” is longlisted for The Black Spring Press Group’s The Christopher Smart-Joan Alice Prize for 2020, and their work "Desert Flowers" was shortlisted and selected for performance by the Women's Playwriting International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in 2015.
AUTO-ORGANICS: ROBOTS FOR A LIVING EARTH
This is the second show presented by //PIXELMOUTH at Grace Exhibition Space, following their December 2022 debut cyborg//HYPERMEAT.
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Biomimicry is the way in which the digital and natural worlds mirror each other. When building a digital world, we must look for sources of our digital imagination in the natural world. All digital creations involve some mimicry of the natural by necessity. Our wire networks become root systems, and our A.I. evolves like an organism, mutating and rearranging. Centering the digital world around its biotic origins is a necessary first step towards integrating the digital into the natural, especially as our forests disappear and we look towards the future through a digital lens. We invite you to reside in the space where machines and forests can nurture each other.
Auto-Organics: Robots for a Living Earth is our proclamation.
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Featuring:
Performance -
Katherine Benitez (performance art - @_imjstlivin)
ZAI (punk rap - @kxngpixie)
Tench Cholnoky (live code glitch art - @tencholnoky)
A.Kazal (folk music/performance art - @ae.kaz)
Magali, A Cult (electropop music, 3D animation - @magaliacult)
Cass Yao (performance art, 3D animation - @cass.yao)
EZR@ (DJ - @keyboard.cowb0y)
Installation:
Pepi (creative code - @pepzicles)
Julia Daser (game and hardware design - @julia.daser)
Grace Jung (biosculpture - @cosmic.worm)
Hong Hua (wearable technology - https://studiohuahong.com/ )
Aiyo (biodesign)
Tāo (sculpture installation - @ting_ting2333
Tench Cholnoky (sculpture installation - @tencholnoky)
John Lepore (lighting and installation degin - @johnlepore_)
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Pay what you can, in advance or at the door.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/auto-organics-robots-for-a-living-earth-tickets-519813966567
Our Winter Rest
Grace Space is at rest for the winter season.
We awaken in February for one night with The New School students
Our spring season begins in March with CLOUDS, RAIN, UNICORNS AND RAINBOWS!!!
Above: Winter photos of our sister space, Rosekill Art Farm, located in Kingston, NY. And Ginger, the dog.
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JOIN OUR MAILING LIST BELOW - Be the first to receive details on upcoming events, opportunities, and details on our Spring Sessions.
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ABOUT GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE
Grace Exhibition Space opened in 2006 and is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging performance works by the current generation of international performance artists, whether emerging, mid career or established.
Grace Exhibition Space is a 501(c)3 organization since 2013 with current Board members: Jill McDermid, Erik Hokanson, Quinn Dukes, Eric Letourneau and Halle Kananack
Run by: Jill McDermid and Erik Hokanson with Jacqui Ray and our volunteers Tench, Seraphina, Celestina, Bunny, alongside others (see About page)
Please also support NYC's Movement Research and Performance Space New York
Performances & Events | Movement Research & Performance Space New York
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"I have found Grace Space to be a breath of fresh air, and a new way to see and experience feelings you may have not faced in a long time. It’s a place to let yourself be exposed, amused, delighted, and terrified all at the same time, and I can say I haven’t experienced this combination of emotions at any gallery or theater I have ever stepped into, and that’s a wonderful thing. The space provides a refreshing perspective on an art scene that has been somewhat shackled and restrained for quite a bit of time now. Grace Exhibition Space is a brave pioneer as it puts Bushwick, as well as New York City, on the forefront of exploration and exposure into the minds and bodies of artists who are truly gifted, fearless, and unique."
- Terri Ciccone. Bushwick Daily January, 2013
"On each night, and in each performance, the human body is redeemed from the mundane and made anew."
Daniella Lagaccia, Williamsburg Greenpoint News+Art (June, 2012)
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Jill McDermid-Hokanson and Erik Hokanson Directors
Grace Exhibition Space 182 Avenue C - between 11th and 12th Streets
NYC, NY 10009
Fb page: Grace Exhibition Space
Twitter: @GraceExSpace #PerformanceArt http://www.GraceExhibitionSpace.org
Ugly christmas Sweater Party HOSTED BY GHOSTFACE KILLAH OF WU TANG CLAN and gustavo guerra
Ugly Christmas sweater party HOsted by Ghostface KILLAH from Wu Tang Clan will
Sunday Dec 18th, 2022 from 11am - 10pm.
Will be selling merch plus ugly Christmas sweaters from Wu-Tang Clan members Method Man + Ghostface KILLAH. Going to have some special guest come through as well.
Cyborg//HYPERMEAT by Pixel Mouth Collective
As the digital world has taken over more and more aspects of human life, human bodies and the ways they interact have become mediated by digital processes. Cyborg//HYPERMEAT seeks to explore the ways in which digital technologies process and display the human form and the inherent distortion, objectification, and obfuscation that is embedded in those processes. In striving for the idyllic 21st-century figure of the Cyborg, we discount and ignore the intrinsic fleshy power of the body. Through performance, installation, and other mediums, Pixel Mouth Collective (Tench Cholnoky, Magali A Cult, and A. Kazal) are attempting to uncover and understand the digital mediations that take place between our bodies every day.
Hita N A
Currently based in NYC, Hita N A is an up-and-coming 22-year-old multidisciplinary artist, vocalist, and music producer aiming to humanize and recreate the Self through a multi-cultural-Franken-genre repertoire and a computer. Their first double-single, “Goru” featuring “A feather,” extracts a dichotomy of their distorted identity as a Bangladeshi-American in these soundscapes. “Laptop mic,” a debut album, releases on December 2nd, 2022; the album has been made only with a laptop + laptop mic. They plan to further explore how to use lo-fi technologies in making projects that disseminate modern production standards.
Magali, A Cult
is a Sci-Fi pop artist based in New York City. Originally from Brussels and Hong Kong, Magali brings an amalgamation of genres and themes together in her music and 3D work. In her previous work (Singularity, V21, Auntie Christ, Mars Tracks, Instructions), Magali has clarified the range that the sci-fi pop aesthetic encompasses.
Besomethingsoft and KĀ
Besomethingsoft and KĀ converge in creation. Malleable entities clash with the authority of machines as a portal opens into a distorted realm of frequency. Ancestral drums and polyrhythmic patterns are re-contextualized in a void of reverberating energy - this howling echoes ancient akashic memory. This is a journey from the seeds of creation to the implosion - cycles of rebirth soaked in primal noise. A calling to move forward, scan backwards, and bathe in the electricity.
Black Aesthetics: The Anti-Poetics of Healing - Curated by Nile Harris
Situated around Nile and Malcolm’s emergent art installation, Nile will curate a night of performances of Black artists working in the intersections of poetry, movement, and sound. Continuing on his investigation of the “anti-poetics” of healing, the evening asks, “What does it take to be okay at the end of the world? And how does coming together provide a balm for our contemporary metaverse of isolation?”
Nile Harris
is a director and curator of live works of art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.
Alexander Paris
is a Brooklyn-based performance artist with experience in acting, playwriting, storytelling, standup, drag, design, curation, and creative direction.
Crackhead Barney
is an American performance artist and ambush interviewer. She shares video of satirical interviews on social media as a viral interview show titled Crackhead Barney and Friends.
BLACK AESTHETICS: Raymond Pinto / Malcolm-x Betts / Nile harris
For the month of November Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris will transform Grace Exhibition Space into a world for possibility to happen. Focusing on visual offerings the artist will make and unmake installations around their ongoing collaboration. Inspired by nothing but inspired by everything the question is “Why are you here, can’t you not see me?”
Raymond Pinto
At an early age, Raymond has contemplated the nature of the dancing body and its forms that blaze or imprint against our casual aesthetic dimension. Since graduating from the Juilliard School, he continues to pursue a career performing, choreographing, and DJ’ing internationally. His focus now is on creating “thinkspaces” to disseminate theoretical practices via intersectional performance.
Malcolm-X Betts
is a New York-based visual and dance artist who believes that art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His artistic work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body.
Nile Harris
is a director and curator of live works of art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.
Black Aesthetics: Imagine Otherwise - Wilkerson\Tnmot Aztro / Chloe Newton/ Kwami Winfield
Black Aesthetics: Imagine Otherwise is a collaborative performance between Arien Wilkerson\Tnmot Aztro\Chloe Newton with sounds by Kwami Winfield
Imagine Otherwise is an invitation to Black artists to explore the possibilities of artistic practice. Inspired by the concept of otherwise possibility, curator Malcolm-x Betts asked choreographer, dancer, and installation artist Arien Wilkerson\Tnmot Aztro, their collaborator Chloe Newton, and sound Artist Kwami Winfield, “How do we act towards the outside violence and violent ways in the United States?”
Chloe Marie
Chloe Marie is a Philadelphia based multi disciplinary artist, born in San Diego California. Chloe went to the San Diego School of creative and performing arts- where she worked with Donald McKayle and Christopher Huggins. During this time She also performed works by Ana Sokolow and multiple Limon repertoires. Chloe moved to Philadelphia in 2013 to attend The University of the Arts, and received her BFA in 2017. During her time there she worked with Kyle and Dinita Clark, Curt Haworth, Doug Varone, Netta Yerushalmy, and Jesse Zaritt. Since graduating, Chloe has been a freelance performer working with many local Philadelphia artists and has shown works in New York, Pittsburg, and Maine.
Arien Wilkerson/TNMOT AZTRO
Arien Wilkerson/Tnmot Aztro considers the complexities within art derive from the alienation of objects, identities, the body, sounds, and humans and is rooted in repurposing and redefining meanings of "fine art" and it's attachment to colonialism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racism.
Their practice articulates epistemology, and ontology by producing large scale performance installations where audiences, public mass, or viewers are submerged within an immersive experience that populates multiple meanings, multiple engines and embody specific movement vocabularies, choreographic structures, and improvisations. Their discipline spans live performance, digital performance, immersive installation, large scale projection mapping and lighting design. Within their creative discipline, they work deeply with live, digital and noise sound experimentation, clothing design and fabrication, writing, scientific research, investigative journalism, community organizing, critical theory, queer studies, and presentation.
Kwami Winfield
Kwami Winfield is an artist from Jersey City, NJ currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She plays trumpet. Her work in sound attempts to emphasize the changeable nature of musical instruments through extension and exploration. She draws a line connecting possible sonic expressions back to the instrument via the body, betraying the intended use of instrument parts. Kwami has been a sound collaborator with Kyle Marshall Choreography since 2020 and has performed solo and collaborative music and performance in DIY venues, public spaces, unnamed locations.
Black Aesthetics: Pink Tacos / BriFrei / Meadow Le Elle - curated by Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris
briefrei / Meadow Le Elle / pinktacos
friday, November 4 - 8pm
BriFrei, Meadow Le Elle, & PinkTacos will come together as individuals to accent and celebrate “Black Aesthetics' in Grace Exhibition Space. Forming a collective for the night but these artists are no strangers to collaborating with one another. The curated artists have unique sounds and practices blending Sounds, Vocals, performance and fashion. Compromised of but not limited to dancers, punk vocalists, & rappers. These underground artists are rising to the possibilities.
BriFrei
Bronx native BriFreí is a performative creator driven by spiritual expansion. Using her performative art practice as a means to maintain physical spiritual and mental health, she creates space for free-flowing movement and intense vocalizations in her works. Art has become her catalyst for transmuting today’s sadness or rage into tomorrow’s imagined acts of love and liberation. Abandoning the idea of limitations, her performances are often fully drenched in her eccentric creations like her handmade garbs & accessories. Whether accompanied by instrumentalists or original sounds, BriFrei’s whimsical & tragic acts invite you on a wild healing experience.
Meadow Le’Elle
Meadow Le'Elle is an American vagabond and seeker of obscure sounds. Inspired by their travel, they take the viewer and listener on an intimate journey of syncopated chaos; expressed through operatic punk vocals, textured electronic beats and wild interpretive dance
Pink Tacos
A band, a brand. A representation of freedom and unity, a source of black empowerment, and a highlight for women being the garden of life. The combination of artistry Pink Tacos gather is a source of many different visual influences and genres. The vocalist duo “Proof and Yoda” use an orchestra of producers to get the unique sound they are searching for. Their sound called “rage” is similar to Xxxtentacion’s early releases. These students who mastered the craft and added their own presence to instrumentation are gifted. They’ve toured the east coast and made some stops along the west, and are currently playing locally and gaining traction for their next hit single.
Subscribe to their Spotify and Apple Music. Would recommend “Pink Gucci”.