Performances by exhibition artist David Antonio Cruz, and artists Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and David Thomson that explore contradictions in identity, freedom, and materiality of the black/brown body.
DAVID ANTONIO CRUZ - HOW TO ORDER A CHOCOLATE CAKE
The experimental and interactive, bilingual performance is based on the last eleven poems, Sonnets of Dark Love, by the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca. The poems were banned for 50 years after his assassination in 1936. The music arrangement is composed and arranged by Daniel de Jesus. The performance is a commentary on the visibility of the queer brown body in society.
DAVID THOMSON - CHIMERA
“A thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.”
Chimera is part of a series of performance installations entitled he his own mythical beast. The work investigates and is a meditation on ideas of identity, appropriation, race, gender and power dynamics in American culture.
JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO - THE DIALECTIC OF LIGHT AND DARK
One of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century is the African-American male-- “invented” because black masculinity represents an amalgam of fear and projections in the American psyche which rarely conveys or contains the trope of truth about the black male’s existence.
- Thelma Golden, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art
the dialectic of light and dark is a movement conversation in which autobiographical memories, formalism and emotionality fold into one another; a meditative dance where emphasis is placed on how light, sound, and the materiality of the body all co-exist as one evolving texture. Using visual deprivation and a queering of space that privileges physical and verbal illegibility, Kosoko’s solo aims to complicate the textures of blackness and identity being performed. Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, a Nigerian American curator, poet, and performance artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY, juxtaposes interior and exterior landscapes to expose a confessional identity-mashup where visual and performance aesthetics collide in a face-off of self-revelation, ecstatic theatricality, and discomfort.
This program is taking place in conjunction with the exhibition Look up here, I'm in heaven, on view at BRIC House June 30-August 14, 2016.
Venue Information:
The Stoop at BRIC House is a public cultural gathering space featuring free, drop-in programming, and offering a place to sit, observe, and participate in multi-disciplinary work.
Beginning Nov. 1, 2022, attendees of any BRIC House programming will no longer have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter the building. Masks are encouraged but not required in all BRIC operated spaces. If you have questions regarding this protocol, please email Safety@bricartsmedia.org