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Apocalyptic Futures

June 2024Multi-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.

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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.

 

*Click here for the digital archive of the work.

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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

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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. 

 

*Click for a digital archive of the work.

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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. 

 

*Click here for a digital archive of the work.

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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. 

 

*Click here for photos of the installation/performance.

*Click here for video art stills.

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Photo Credit:Mai'a Williams

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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. 

*Photos of the installation/performance. 

*Video art stills of the performance. 

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Photo Credit: Sydney Swanson

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Photo Credit: Mai'a Williams

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