Wasif Sami in performance
Doors 7:30 PM / Performances 8:00 PM
Admission: $10
Join us for an electrifying evening on May 17th!
This is our final performance event for the spring season. At the core of these performances lies a deep exploration of human experience and expression. Each artist brings a unique perspective, weaving together identity, belonging, and transformative themes.
Featuring:
Open Call Artists:
Alexa Wilson (New Zealand)
Lena Deutsch
V
Wasif Sami
International Guest Artist:
Mehdi-George Lahlou (Morocco/Belgium)
MEHDI-GEORGES LAHLOU [BELGIUM] @mehdigeorgeslahlou
Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, born in 1983 in Sables d’Olonne, is a French-Moroccan artist who lives and works between Paris, Brussels, and Casablanca. He was trained at the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Nantes Saint-Nazaire and earned a Ph.D from AVANS University in the Netherlands in 2010. In 2014, Lahlou participated in the first session of Les réalisateurs, a postgraduate program in Art and Business, co-directed by Fabrice Hyber. From 2017 to 2020, he served as associate artist at CDN Normandie-Rouen and was an artist in residence at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht from 2019 to 2020. His solo exhibitions include notable venues such as SPACES Art Center in Cleveland, Centrale for Contemporary Art in Brussels, and the Kent State Museum in Ohio. Mehdi-Georges Lahlou has also shown his work in numerous international exhibitions and biennials worldwide.
A Botanical Conversation
In "A Botanical Conversation," a performance directed by Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, the artists delve into themes of the palm tree, cultural migrations, and queer ecology. With contributions from Diwe Augustin-Glave, CHIMI, and Dr Lady J, this artistic experience offers a deep dive into the relationships between humanity and nature.
"A Botanical Conversation" invites the murmurs born under the dome of the Cleveland Botanical Garden to escape, as if the essence of this place were transported to a new audience. These murmurs become stories, real dialogues, in a poetic and immersive experience for the spectators.
A Botanical Conversation
Featuring Diwe Augustin-Glave, CHIMI, Dr Lady J. Musical collaboration by Nature. Text collaboration by Simon Njami, Arianne Foks, Ghita Serraj and Dr Lady J
Alexa Wilson [NYC/NZ]
Alexa Wilson is an interdisciplinary artist; dance/performance, video, and text artist from New Zealand . She has presented within NZ, NY, Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, India and China in theatre, film and gallery spaces: Berlin at Sophiensaele, Uferstudios, Ackerstadtpalast, Acud, Month of Performance Art Berlin, Kule, Meinblau, Tanzfabrik, Gr_nd Gallery, Agora Collective, at Brussels Volksroom, Vienna’s Improper Walls Gallery and Impuls Tanz, London’s Ugly Duck Gallery, Glasgow’s Buzzcut festival, NYC’s Center for Performance Research, Dixon Place, Mothership residency, Vancouver’s Space to Fail residency hosted by the Dance Centre, Beijing’s Red Gate residency, Melbourne’s Dancehouse, and India’s Morni Hill’s performance Biennale. She has curated Morni Hills Performance Residency in India (2017) and is Artistic Director/founder of Experimental Dance Festival Aotearoa/NZ. She published Theatre of Ocean in 2022, has written articles in several publications and has a First Class Master of Philosophy. She has danced for many NZ choreographers.
V [NYC]
@tostones_ennyc
V Tineo (V) is a versatile and talented interdisciplinary artist hailing from New York but with ancestral ties to the Dominican Republic. Their artistic endeavors encompass a wide range of mediums, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, printmaking, and installations. Through these diverse forms of expression, V seeks to convey various ideas, touching upon themes such as home, family, body, and society. Their artwork acts as a language, communicating powerful narratives that emphasize the significance of these concepts.
WASIF SAMI [NJ]
@wasif.sami
Wasif Sami is a theater director and performance artist invested in moving and doing otherwise. His improvisational dance practice has followed him from his bedroom in New Jersey to the streets of Wisconsin and Bangalore. He is obsessed with intimacy and becoming, and studies anthropology, theater, and gender & sexuality studies at Princeton University.
LENA GARDEN OF HEDON [NYC] @garden_of_hedon
Lena, Garden of Hedon (they/babe), is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary Performance Artist, curator, and event producer from New York City. Their dramatic and ritualistic movement flows from their post-modern dance and gymnastics background. Lena uses technology, water, darkwave, noise, dirt, and gore to explore the properties of water: its borderless transcendence through sanctity and essentiality.
Since graduating from Hampshire College in 2018 Lena founded @disembodied_affair, a virtual performance art series produced in 2020 that featured artists around the world. They then cofounded MOMENTA @momentanyc an experimental dance and performance art series homed at Trans Pecos in December 2022. Lena has performed at Trans Pecos, Chinatown Soup Gallery, Purgatory, Honey's, and DIY spaces across the city. They are currently pursuing their MS in Sustainability at Columbia University.