02/15/2021
ABSCONDED :: #PRECEDENTSDAY
A PERFORMANCE BY DRAGONFLY
as part of the virtual exhibition
Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works
DRAGONFLY [she/they, aka Robin LaVerne Wilson] is a multidisciplinary artist who creates media and performance rituals for collective liberation. Born in Detroit and raised in Texas, she descends from enslaved Africans who rooted themselves in Alabama and Georgia after the end of the first American Civil War. She is the Gen X daughter of a career US Army combat medic (Korea and Viet Nam), and a military wife / homemaker / non-domestic cleaner. The unresolved intergenerational traumas of race, class, gender, religion and s*xuality inform Dragonfly’s work as an artist/activist.
Dragonfly has studied with Linda Montano, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Sharon Bridgforth, earned a BA from Rutgers, and is completing an MA from CUNY in Applied Theatre. Recent appearances include collaborations with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens at NY MOMA and in the San Francisco Pride Parade, environmental street activism with Al Límite Collective and Sane Energy Project, debut of her solo show Black Q***r Madness is/as Hypersanity at Theatre Neumarkt in Zurich, as well as a decade of leadership and performance with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir.
Her current project is ABSCONDED, featuring embodiment of historical fugitive and forgotten founding mother Ona Judge. ABSCONDED is a recurring site- and context-specific public performance on streets and social media. Archival performance of #UnpaidLaborDay was co-produced by Grace Exhibition Space, and #EjectionDay was supported by Hemispheric Institute. ABSCONDED has received coverage by Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail and Ecumenica.
Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works
Ron Athey, Cassils, Dragonfly, Arshia Fatima Haq, Sebastian Hernandez, Sherman Fleming, rafa esparza, Lila De Maghales, Christopher Richmond, Ni Santas, Denise Uyehara, Wilawan Wiangthong, Xina Xurner, Kim Zumpfe
February 15th – March 15th, 2021
The Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University is honored to host BODY MEMORY BODY VISION – Performance Works a virtual exhibition that will take place over the course of February and March 2021, co-curated by Danielle Cobb, Olivia Collins, Nicole Daskas, Lucile Henderson, Marcus Herse, Hannah Scott and Natalia Ventura.
Members of the Art Department’s DEI Committee, student gallery assistants and the gallery coordinator have co-curated this exhibition to present artists and artist collectives whose practices are vital to furthering diversity, equity and inclusion. Each week we will highlight two artists or collectives and release additions to the growing exhibition accompanied by student writing from interviews and personal notes to poetry.
Performance wants to be partaken in and a virtual exhibition can hardly replace the understanding of bodies interacting in the real world; the fleetingness of the moment and the impact that intense experiences have, the smells, the sounds, the feeling of proximity to other bodies and how we negotiate shared spaces cannot be captured via documentation. However, this show takes the notion of space and who occupies it as its cue. Addressing the ongoing underrepresentation of marginalized groups in the institutionalized and free market artworld, the exhibition shows a selection of performance works by BIPOC and genderqueer artists. Questioning the status quo of visibility within the framework of the contemporary art world and actively contributing to changing that status is one aspect the contributions share. Another one is the deliberate step outside of this framework beyond addressing artworld internal discourses, in offering visions relevant to communities and social realities.
Body Memory Body Vision – Performance Works presents 16 artists who create a distinct range of actions and whose aesthetic scope is manifold and cannot be subsumed under one criterion of expression - stylistic unity is beside the point. What they have in common is making ways of being visible that are invisible or actively suppressed; it is the invitation to see the complexities and scope of society’s heterogeneity beyond the binary thinking that still guides mainstream culture’s decision making in philosophical and therefore social, political and economic terms.
ABSCONDED :: #PRECEDENTSDAY
A PERFORMANCE BY DRAGONFLY
as part of the virtual exhibition
Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works
DRAGONFLY [she/they, aka Robin LaVerne Wilson] is a multidisciplinary artist who creates media and performance rituals for collective liberation. Born in Detroit and raised in Texas, she descends from enslaved Africans who rooted themselves in Alabama and Georgia after the end of the first American Civil War. She is the Gen X daughter of a career US Army combat medic (Korea and Viet Nam), and a military wife / homemaker / non-domestic cleaner. The unresolved intergenerational traumas of race, class, gender, religion and s*xuality inform Dragonfly’s work as an artist/activist.
Dragonfly has studied with Linda Montano, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Sharon Bridgforth, earned a BA from Rutgers, and is completing an MA from CUNY in Applied Theatre. Recent appearances include collaborations with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens at NY MOMA and in the San Francisco Pride Parade, environmental street activism with Al Límite Collective and Sane Energy Project, debut of her solo show Black Q***r Madness is/as Hypersanity at Theatre Neumarkt in Zurich, as well as a decade of leadership and performance with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir.
Her current project is ABSCONDED, featuring embodiment of historical fugitive and forgotten founding mother Ona Judge. ABSCONDED is a recurring site- and context-specific public performance on streets and social media. Archival performance of #UnpaidLaborDay was co-produced by Grace Exhibition Space, and #EjectionDay was supported by Hemispheric Institute. ABSCONDED has received coverage by Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail and Ecumenica.
Body Memory - Body Vision: Performance Works
Ron Athey, Cassils, Dragonfly, Arshia Fatima Haq, Sebastian Hernandez, Sherman Fleming, rafa esparza, Lila De Maghales, Christopher Richmond, Ni Santas, Denise Uyehara, Wilawan Wiangthong, Xina Xurner, Kim Zumpfe
February 15th – March 15th, 2021
The Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University is honored to host BODY MEMORY BODY VISION – Performance Works a virtual exhibition that will take place over the course of February and March 2021, co-curated by Danielle Cobb, Olivia Collins, Nicole Daskas, Lucile Henderson, Marcus Herse, Hannah Scott and Natalia Ventura.
Members of the Art Department’s DEI Committee, student gallery assistants and the gallery coordinator have co-curated this exhibition to present artists and artist collectives whose practices are vital to furthering diversity, equity and inclusion. Each week we will highlight two artists or collectives and release additions to the growing exhibition accompanied by student writing from interviews and personal notes to poetry.
Performance wants to be partaken in and a virtual exhibition can hardly replace the understanding of bodies interacting in the real world; the fleetingness of the moment and the impact that intense experiences have, the smells, the sounds, the feeling of proximity to other bodies and how we negotiate shared spaces cannot be captured via documentation. However, this show takes the notion of space and who occupies it as its cue. Addressing the ongoing underrepresentation of marginalized groups in the institutionalized and free market artworld, the exhibition shows a selection of performance works by BIPOC and genderqueer artists. Questioning the status quo of visibility within the framework of the contemporary art world and actively contributing to changing that status is one aspect the contributions share. Another one is the deliberate step outside of this framework beyond addressing artworld internal discourses, in offering visions relevant to communities and social realities.
Body Memory Body Vision – Performance Works presents 16 artists who create a distinct range of actions and whose aesthetic scope is manifold and cannot be subsumed under one criterion of expression - stylistic unity is beside the point. What they have in common is making ways of being visible that are invisible or actively suppressed; it is the invitation to see the complexities and scope of society’s heterogeneity beyond the binary thinking that still guides mainstream culture’s decision making in philosophical and therefore social, political and economic terms.
