Weekly Happenings: June 29–July 6, 2021
Installation view of Alan Ruiz’s Container and Contained at The Kitchen in New York City.
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.
This week, see Robin Frohardt’s film and installation The Plastic Bag Store at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance in Los Angeles, visit a newly opened exhibition of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s work at the New Museum in New York City, and stream Raja Feather Kelly’s The KILL ONE Race—extended through the end of the month.
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.
Lorraine O’Grady
Both/And
Brooklyn Museum in New York City
In-person exhibition
Through July 18, 2021
Both/And is the first retrospective of one of the most significant contemporary figures working in performance, conceptual, and feminist art. The exhibition features twelve of the major projects Lorraine O’Grady has produced over her four-decade career and also debuts a much-anticipated new installation.
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Twisted
New Museum in New York City
In-person exhibition
June 30–Oct 3, 2021
This exhibition brings together a selection of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s work in drawing, sculpture, video, and photography, along with interactive and net-based works, focusing on themes of transmutation, identity construction, and the evolution of the cyborg.
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.
Raja Feather Kelly
The KILL ONE Race
Film
Through July 31, 2021
Filmed at Playwrights Horizons during the pandemic, and inspired by the 1963 dystopian novel Kill One, The KILL ONE Race is a reality competition game-play created by Raja Feather Kelly. Over the course of seven days, seven contestants compete in a social and ethical obstacle course to be proven the most ethical—and earn the singular prize of death.
Robin Frohardt
The Plastic Bag Store
UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance
In-Person Installation and Film
June 30–July 11, 2021
Robin Frohardt‘s Creative Capital Project, The Plastic Bag Store, opens in Los Angeles this week! The project is a public art installation and immersive film experience designed to take place in a retail storefront. Employing humor, puppetry and craft, Frohardt focuses a critical lens upon our culture of consumption and convenience — specifically, the enduring effects of our single-use plastics.
Taylor Mac
Whitman in the Woods
University of Michigan
Digital presentations and lecture
Through 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 Taylor Mac’s Whitman in the Woods—a series of short films where performs favorite poems by 19th-century American poet and queer icon, Walt Whitman, dressed in glamorous drag costumes and makeup.
In the News
“On making space for the impossible”
Creative Independent
June 2, 2021
Sabrina Orah Mark talks to Creative Independent about her writing practice: “I sit down often and I have no idea what I’m doing. Often I don’t really know what I think until I write through it. I’ve been holding on to writing more and more as a kind of life raft so that I can understand what is happening around me.”
“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, awardees 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…