Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I write, perform, and make things that address a Black queer relationship to time. My research ranges from quarks to Le Corbusier, cakewalks to Quaking aspen, diamond mines to Mike Brown. These points of interest are couched within ongoing fields of concern: Black and queer performativity, absence and exhaustion, and the way time and space appear on and in the body. In addition to presenting performances, writing, video, and 2D work across North America and Europe, I have contributed significantly to projects by Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, and Julien Prévieux, among others. My writing has been published in Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, Art Practical, and I have contributed chapters to a range of publications including Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance (Oxford, 2017). I teach, make, and build in Chicago.

While At Headlands

While at Headlands I will be researching movement and developing the world (collecting and building objects, language, video, etc.) of Notes on Territory, a performance lecture. Notes on Territory is a multimedia movement project in the guise of a PowerPoint presentation about the history of containment architecture—including cathedral, fort, prison, and public housing architecture. The work attempts to juxtapose gothic and colonial architecture with American modernist and coastal military structures. The question it asks is: How do organic bodies survive these inorganic spaces? Trees, water, and rocks—which mirror the human compulsion toward freedom—all provide insight into the long-term survival of containment architectures.

Selected Works

Footage from selected performances from 2010 to the present for which I served as director/choreographer. Videography courtesy Chicago Dancemakers Forum, FRESH Festival, AUNTS, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, California College of the Arts, Links Hall, Marie Alarcón, Wafaa Yasin, Mark McBeth, and Hanh Nguyen.