Weekly Happenings: May 26–June 1, 2021
J’Nai Bridges performs Daniel Bernard Roumain’s They Still Want to Kill Us.
Each week, we create a list of exhibitions, screenings, events, and news featuring Creative Capital Awardees of all disciplines. This list can include shows that have recently opened, shows about to close, and noteworthy headlines and interviews that profile artists and their work.
We encourage you to follow the links to explore this week’s art highlights from around the world, including Estrellx Supernova’s virtual club space for Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, and People of Culture premiering May 27, Daniel Bernard Roumain’s short film and aria on the past 100 years of racial issues in America, and Kyle Abraham’s new ballet work.
Events, Exhibitions, & Screenings
Anne Patterson
Mother + Daughter
Jessica Hagen Gallery, Newport, RI
Exhibition
May 22–June 19, 2021
2006 Creative Capital Awardee Anne Patterson is showing work alongside her mother, Anne Mimi Sammis, for the first time. The exhibition features Patterson’s ribbon and watercolor work and Sammis’s bronze sculptures.
Cannupa Hanska Luger
Each/Other
Denver Art Museum
Exhibition
May 23–Aug 22, 2021
This exhibition features work by 2020 Creative Capital Awardee Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt, two leading Indigenous contemporary artists whose processes focus on collaborative artmaking. Luger and Watt’s work is divided into two sections that explore the artists’ engagement with community, materials and the land. A new collaborative piece is featured where the two artists’ works converge within the gallery.
Daniel Bernard Roumain
They Still Want to Kill Us
The Public Theater
Virtual Screening
May 25–July 31, 2021
They Still Want To Kill Us is a short film and an aria by 2002 Creative Capital Awardee Daniel Bernard Roumain which speaks truth to what transpired in 1921 at the Tulsa Race Massacre, an atrocity all but deleted from history until recently. The work is being premiered to mark one year since the murder of George Floyd: a commentary on our progress this last century on the issue of race and America’s treatment of Black life. The work is performed by J’Nai Bridges and directed by Yoram Savion.
Estrellx Supernova
UNDERGROUND UNDERNEATH THE UNDERGROUND [U.U.U.], PRELUDE
Counterpulse
Virtual Event
May 27–30, 2021
A project by 2020 Creative Capital Awardee Estrellx Supernova, UNDERGROUND UNDERNEATH THE UNDERGROUND [U.U.U.] is a virtual club space where Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, and People of Culture are invited to safely gather, heal, and celebrate joy through dance, ritual, and pleasure. It will be activated through durational club dancing, endurance-sustained art, eco-drag, improvisation, ritual, and Qi Energetic principles.
Jen Bervin
Doing And Undoing
Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco
Exhibition
Through May 29, 2021
Encompassing fiber works, installation, and video, 2013 Creative Capital Awardee Jen Bervin’s solo exhibition draws on the poetic tensions of text/textile, inviting viewers to reflect on language as a material and technology for intimate forms of connection.
Kyle Abraham
Optional Family: a divertissement
The Royal Ballet, London
Livestream
Friday May 28, 2021 at 2:30pm ET
2013 Creative Capital Awardee Kyle Abraham’s Optional Family: a divertissement will be performed in-person as part of The Royal Opera House’s “21st-Century Choreographers” program, through May 30. The May 28th show will be livestreamed on their website for those with tickets.
Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble
The Sprezzaturameron
Baryshnikov Arts Center
Virtual Screening
May 17–31, 2021
2016 Creative Capital Awardees Tei Blow and Sean McElroy present the world premiere of a new video docudrama. The work follows two men who must confront the precarious nature of art-making in an apocalyptic near-future. As they gain awareness of their own privilege in a reforming world, the duo embarks on a vision quest to craft the perfect apology, inspired by the infamous apologists of the #MeToo era.
Yance Ford
PRIDE, “Episode 5: The Culture Wars”
FX
TV Series
FX’s new docuseries, PRIDE, which chronicles the past 60 years of the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights in America. Episode 5, directed by 2012 Creative Capital Awardee, Yance Ford, looks at how the culture wars in the 1990s galvanized LGBTQ+ people to create policies and organizations that still fight for equality today.
In the News
“Rethinking What It Means to Be a Philadelphia Artist”
New York Times
May 20, 2021
The New York Times wrote about a new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, featuring work on view by 2020 Creative Capital Awardee Jesse Krimes: “The goal of the collection, titled ‘Purgatory,’ was “to challenge the disposability of incarcerated people, to make their and my full humanity visible to the public,’ said Mr. Krimes.”
“In Denver, the Pandemic Deepens Artistic Collaboration”
New York Times
May 21, 2021
The New York Times writes about the collaboration between 2020 Creative Capital Awardee Cannupa Hanska Luger and artist Marie Watt for a new exhibition at the Denver Art Museum: “Not only does the exhibition pair two contemporary artists, who are displaying their separate works as well as one joint project, many of the pieces were made also with hundreds of contributions from non-artist volunteers, a mode known today as ‘social practice’ and one with much older roots.”
“A Conversation with Kenseth Armstead”
Sculpture Magazine
May 21, 2021
2008 Creative Capital Awardee Kenseth Armstead speaks to Sculpture about current projects and how Spook, his Creative Capital Project, continues to tie into his practice. “On any street, you’re on Roman streets, with French Colonial architecture, with jacked-up Modernist German concepts, but the whole idea of being in a society is an African notion. As Africans you don’t have any representations of that anywhere, physically, in your built American world. So, in a way, the American Revolution and our erasure from the beginning of the struggle became this battery for me to make an African physicalness in New York City.”
“James Schamus Debuts First TV Series, Somos, on Netflix”
Variety
May 25, 2021
National Advisory Council member James Schamus is debuting Somos, his first television outing, on June 30. The six-episode Netflix series is based on the ProPublica report “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Ginger Thompson.
“Anti-Black Discrimination and Toxic Workplaces Are All Too Common in the Arts Administration Field”
Artnet News
May 26, 2021
2012 Creative Capital Awardee Paul Rucker writes on his experience with racial discrimination while working in arts administration in Seattle: “As a Black employee you’re scrutinized more than others… I’ve seen firsthand the structural barriers that are put in place that don’t allow equitable access to employment. It’s not only explicit acts of racism. It’s conflicts of interest, cronyism, protectionism, pay inequity, and fraud, often enacted by people in leadership who are the very ones in charge of policing others.”
“Los Angeles Is Covered in Delicious Fruit and No One Is Eating It”
Altas Obscura
May 26, 2021
Atlas Obscura discusses the large amounts of loquats on public streets that go unpicked and uneaten, highlighting 2013 Creative Capital Awardee Fallen Fruit’s “legendary and long-running Los Angeles art project that creates maps of public fruit around the city.”
More News & Stories
Creative Capital Awardees at Sundance Film Festival 2025.