Artists in Conversation: Helina Metaferia and Steve Locke. Thursday March 4, 2021
With Helina Metaferia’s multi-channel video work (Middle) Passage of Dreams as a launching point, this intimate conversation will address a question posed by this work and spelled out by bell hooks: How can one create in a way that “exists not only as that struggle which also opposes dehumanization but as that movement which enables creative, expansive self-actualization?” (Middle) Passage of Dreams addresses subjectivities of the black body within the context of the historical and current framework of the United States. Similarly, Steve Locke’s work engages questions of resistance, the body and its challenges. In both artists’ work, underlying so much of the inquiry is a question of love, the body and the potential for self-actualization.
Steve Locke is a New York-based artist whose work directs our gaze to help us look critically and unflinchingly at our shared history. Locke was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Detroit, Michigan. In 2020, he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Solo exhibitions include the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, among others. He has done projects with ForFreedoms, Kickstarter, the Boston Public Library, and P.S. Satellites/Prospect IV in New Orleans and has had gallery exhibitions with yours mine & ours, Samsøñ, LaMontagne Gallery, Gallery Kayafas, and Mendes Wood. He attended residencies with the City of Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The MacDowell Colony, and Skowhegan. Locke is a recipient of grants from Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Art Matters Foundation. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker, and his writing has been published in Artforum as well as in museum catalogues. Locke is a Professor of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.
Zoom Workshop: Virtual Gardeners
Wednesday, January 27, 7 – 8:30pm EST / RSVP
This virtual performance workshop, led by artist Helina Metaferia, is especially designed for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) identifying students, staff, and faculty of all genders who are interested in participating in a zoom video performance that rethinks the images and narratives that we consume daily during our screen dependent era.
The workshop interrogates our unique time of both social justice and social distancing, while considering how we can pivot the dynamics of online meeting spaces to create vulnerability without proximity, and vitality as opposed to fatigue. The culmination of this workshop will be an experimental artwork featuring participants.
All participants will be asked to sign an image release waiver before being granted access to the workshop. Participants are asked to keep their video cameras on during the entire time.
In-Person Workshop: By Way Of Revolution
December 5, 1-4 pm / 1 Washington Place, The Jerry H Labowitz Theatre for the Performing Arts. Duration: 3 hours / Maximum participant size per workshop for social distancing: 15 / RSVP
This in-person performance art workshop, led by artist Helina Metaferia, is especially designed for women-identifying Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) that serve as students, staff, and faculty. The workshop investigates how histories of protest inform our present day moment, and the powerful yet often overlooked role that BIPOC women play in them. The workshop will rely on performative gestures of resilience to explore how institutionalized and systemic trauma gets stored in the body, and provide creative and tangible tools for self-care and communal care to help sustain ourselves. The artist will lead participants through a series of writing, mindfulness, and performance exercises based on histories of social change movements and creative activism. Participants also have the option to volunteer to be photographed for a series of artwork that combines archives of historical liberation movements with the images of workshop participants. This workshop is held in conjunction with Helina Metaferia’s solo exhibition at Gallatin Gallery from January 25-March 12, 2021. All New York University social distancing protocols for in person gatherings will be followed, including testing, masks, six feet distance, and hand hygiene.