Contemporary Art Galleries at the University of Connecticut is proud to host the Radical Black Art and Performance Series. The series is a twenty-day digital program spanning the entirety of Black History Month 2021, featuring queer Black and brown artists, scholars and allies who make work, practice or who’s discipline interconnects, interlocks, and makes legible “Négritude: The affirmation or consciousness of the value of Black or African culture, heritage, and identity in art and education.” The goal of this curated programming is to raise awareness of, and cultivate, Black and queer consciousness through rigorous dialogue, film screenings, and guest presentations and workshops from practicing artists and academics in the field. Artist and Performer Arien Wilkerson will lead the series and serve as guest curator/programmer for the project.
UConn Contemporary Art Galleries received generous funding from the President’s Commitment to Community Initiative through the UConn Office of Diversity and Inclusion to make the programming possible. This initiative aims to reduce bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination and to foster respect and understanding among the UConn community.
For more information about the series, including upcoming events and registrations please visit CAG's website: https://contemporaryartgalleries.uconn.edu - the next event is listed below, we look forward to seeing you on Zoom!
2/4/2021
Performance Screening: Bronx Gothic by Okwui Okpokwasili
4:00pm - 6:00pm
Event Registration
Trailer
Okwui Okpokwasili is a performer, choreographer, and writer creating multidisciplinary performance pieces that draw viewers into the interior lives of women of color, particularly those of African and African American women, whose stories have long been overlooked and rendered invisible. The child of immigrants from Nigeria, Okpokwasili was born and raised in the Bronx, and the histories of these places and the girls and women who inhabit them feature prominently in much of her work. Her productions are highly experimental in form, bringing together elements of dance, theater, and the visual arts (with spare and distinctive sets designed by her husband and collaborator, Peter Born).
Event Description: Corner bodegas, Newport loosies, and Orchard Beach on fire mark the landscape of Okwui Okpokwasili’s Bronx Gothic. Clandestine notes are passed between two 11-year old girls in a sex-saturated, mid-80’s 6th grade. Memory threatens to break the body in this partially true chronicle of one woman’s past. Springing from an exploration of the West African griot storytelling tradition and the epistolary trope of letter-writing in Victorian Gothic novels, Bronx Gothic is a dark and intensely physical solo performance by Okpokwasili–best known for her work with Ralph Lemon, Nora Chipaumire, Young Jean Lee, and Dean Moss-along with direction and visual design by Bessie award-winner Peter Born.
Okwui Okpokwasili: Writer, Performer and Sound Designer
Peter Born: Director, Visual and Sound Designer
* Please join us for a brief discussion after the screening
For more information, contact: Luke Seward at luke.seward@uconn.edu