Weekly Happenings: June 22–29, 2021
Performance still from Taylor Mac’s Whitman in the Woods. Photo: ALL ARTS
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.
June is Pride month! This week, we’re highlighting events by awardees that celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. Check out the University of Michigan’s digital programming which includes a comedy special by Becca Blackwell and streaming of Taylor Mac’s performance of Whitman in the Woods, and learn about the history of the community through FX’s new series PRIDE which features an episode directed by Yance Ford.
Celebrating Pride Month
Digital Pride 2021
University of Michigan
Digital presentations and lecture
June 12 – July 6, 2021
The University of Michigan hosts a free lineup of digital presentations and lectures for Pride Month. Included in the program is Creative Capital Awardee Becca Blackwell’s They, Themself and Schmerm and Taylor Mac’s Whitman in the Woods.
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 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.
Events, Exhibitions, & Screenings
Alan Ruiz
Container and Contained
The Kitchen in New York City
In-person exhibition
June 17–July 24, 2021
Alan Ruiz’s practice considers the way the built environment engenders social hierarchies through an array of media, standards, and techniques. This exhibition includes three works that explore the redistribution of value and authority through multiple systems.
Ebony Noelle Golden
Jubilee 11213: Work-In-Process
Online Ceremony
June 27, 2021 at 6-7pm ET
Inspired by the founding of the Weeksville community in 1838, Jubilee 11213 tells the story of descendants of a Black FREEdom colony who return to reclaim their ancestral inheritance. Devised as a public processional and theatrical ceremony, this iteration features performance films, music, and stories that venerate Weeksville’s spirit and powerful legacy of self-determination and interdependence. The work is conceived and created by Ebony Noelle Golden and devised with an international ensemble of collaborators.
Eisa Davis
The Essentialisn’t: Gold Taste
Performance Space New York
In-Person Performance and Installation
Through June 27, 2021
Part of Afrofemononomy//Work The Roots—a group activation of black femme theater artists in celebration of each other—this performance and installation explores unproduced one-act plays by the late Kathleen Collins.
Mallory Catlett
Archive: this was the end
Mabou Mines in New York City
In-person exhibition
Through July 18, 2021
Archive: this was the end is the afterlife of a performance as an interactive sculpture created by Creative Capital Awardee Mallory Catlett and Keith Skretch, in collaboration with sound artist G Lucas Crane. The installation allows the audience to reactivate the set made of a cabinet wall, walking into and around it following the moving portraits.
In the News
“Joseph Keckler: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert”
NPR
June 14, 2021
Joesph Keckler performs four songs for NPR’s tiny Desk Concert, filmed in Brooklyn. “A classically trained singer, performance artist and writer whose work spans styles and genres,” writes NPR, “Keckler turns his Tiny Desk (home) concert, shot in Brooklyn, into a showcase of his dynamism as a performer.”
“Ekene Ijeoma reveals the revolutionary potential of data-based art”
Document Journal
June 16, 2021
Document Journal writes about Ekene Ijeoma’s artistic practice, which is driven by an activist spirit: “the artist and MIT assistant professor creates participatory installations that reveal urgent truths about our unjust world.”
“From the ‘80s to Now: How Lorraine O’Grady’s Work Continues to Inspire Change”
Creative Capital
June 17, 2021
We look to support artists at catalytic moments in their careers, or a moment in which the artist is ready to take their career into a new phase. We highlight the work of Lorraine O’Grady, who at age 81, received a Creative Capital Award in 2015 for her project MBN—30 Years Later, which would reprise her famous persona Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire.
“Dao Strom and Brian Harnetty: In Conversation”
Aquarium Drunkard
June 22, 2021
In this conversation, Brian Harnetty and Dao Strom talk about how the intersections of sound, language, music, memory, history, place, and practices of “listening”—to the past, to the present—fuel their respective interdisciplinary practices. Although working in quite different contexts, both artists root their art in a strong contemplation of place and one’s relationship to “place”.
More News & Stories
We’re excited that the Whitney Biennial 2022, Quiet as It’s Kept (April 6 to September 5, 2022) will include Creative Capital Awardees: Alia Farid (2022), Terence Nance (2021), Sable Elyse…