Apocalyptic Futures
June 2024 - Multi-site performance/installation in Winona, MN and Minneapolis of my most recently published book, Apocalypse Here. It includes film photography, community conversations, and altar work. Exploring grief, anxiety, rurality and place, ancestors, listening work and dance.
Blooming Underground
November 2022 - Performance/installation at Winona Arts Center (Winona, MN). I spent a year collaborating with local creatives, including a puppeteer, digital musician, photographer, and videographer to create a multi-media installation that included sculpture, music, video arts, cartomancy, dance, and audience participation. Exploring the Driftless landscape, Paradise Marronage, the apocalypse, grief, pandemic, and the healing rites of my southern rural family.
*Funded by a Southeastern Minnesota Arts grant.
Photo credit: Xitlali
Apocalypse Here
Autumn 2022 - Four readings at Winona Arts Center and online (Winona, MN and online). A series of lyrical essays, stories, and prompts meditating on the importance of radical care work during these days of pandemics, racial uprisings, economic instability, and climate change especially in rural communities. These essays are inspired by the lessons from more than 15 years living and organizing in rural communities under the constant threat of violence - in Chiapas, Mexico; West Bank, Palestine; Sinai, Egypt; Standing Rock, ND. I asked questions such as: how do we raise our children, take care of our elders, build communities which are liberatory, imaginative, inspirational, safer, and learn resilience and rest in the midst of unexpected chaos and turmoil? In collaboration with Indigenous artist/activist.
*Funded by a Minnesota State Arts Board grant.
*Click here for online readings: Reading 1, Reading 2, Reading 3
Photo Credit: Sharon Mansur
In the Ruins of Paradise
November 2021 - Is a multimedia installation at the Frozen River Film Festival in collaboration with a local visual artist, a performer/puppeteer, and a writer/musician. Meditating on Blackness, Indigeneity and our relationship to the landscape, healing traditions, climate change. The text was excerpted from my book, The Future of Love.
*Funded by a Minnesota State Arts Board grant.
Photo credit: Stuff Studio
Migration
August 2021 - Spoken word and movement collaboration on 3rd street outdoors (Winona, MN). With a movement artist, Erin Drummond. Exploring birds, nomadism, migratory patterns, and anti-Black police violence.
Photo credit: Sydney Swanson
Last Prayer Before Sunrise
February-March 2020 - Performance/installation at Watkins Gallery (Winona, MN). I designed a month-long installation that included photographs, sculpture, music, video arts, and poetry. I did two hour-long spoken word performances accompanied by live and recorded music. Exploring migration, refugee experiences, water, home, belonging, and exile.
Photo Credit:Mai'a Williams
Photo Credit:Mai'a Williams
Bodies of the Desert
November 2018 - Performance/installation at Public Launch (Winona, MN). I designed an installation that included textile arts, video arts and performed an hour-long spoken word performance about immigration and refugee experiences, Homer’s Odyssey, and anti-Blackness and xenophobia.
Photo Credit: Sydney Swanson
Photo Credit: Mai'a Williams