jaamil olawale kosoko

(Nigerian American originally from Detroit, MI) 

the hold 

Co-Presented with the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA

DATES 

Performance and Installation: Sept. 10 at 6:00 pm

Exhibition Dates: Sept. 6–Oct.14

Gallery Hours: Monday—Saturday, 10:00 am–4:00 pm

DESCRIPTION 

jaamil olawale kosoko’s meditative multi-channel film and installation Syllabus for Black Love serves as the ship inside which the multimedia performance the hold is positioned. Through rhythmic and restorative gestures, the hold creates a perceptive and somatic experience for both performer and audience. 

Merging fabric, lighting, time, and sound art as sculptural material within, Syllabus for Black Love, the hold is an embrace, a place, a time between time. This performance—featuring an alternating ensemble of performers/doulas—is a slippery, emerging, chameleonic practice rupturing the borders of reality, theatricality, and the digital realm. Jumping through and bending the time-space continuum, the hold behaves as both arrival and exit—a birth passage into the nuance of Black lives attempting the critical and alchemical work of self-examination, discovery, and becoming.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

jaamil olawale kosoko is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. Their book Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts was released in Spring of 2022. Kosoko is also a 2022 MacDowell Fellow, 2020 Pew Fellow in the Arts, 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2017-19 Princeton Arts Fellow, 2019 Red Bull Writing Fellow, 2018 NEFA NDP Production Grant recipient, 2017 MAP Fund recipient, and 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. Their creative practice draws from Black study and queer theories of the body, weaving together visual performance, lecture, ritual, and spiritual practice.

Their previous live art works Chameleon (The Living Installments) premiered virtually in April 2020, Séancers (2017) and the Bessie nominated #negrophobia (2015) have toured internationally, appearing in major festivals including Tanz im August (Berlin), Moving in November (Finland), Within Practice (Sweden), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), Brighton Festival (UK), Oslo Teaterfestival (Norway), and Zürich MOVES! (Switzerland), among others. Additionally, Kosoko lectures regularly at Princeton University, Stockholm University of the Arts, and Master Exerce ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France. In Fall 2020, they were appointed the 3rd annual Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Connect with jaamil on IG at jaamil_means_beauty.

Nile Harris is a performer and a director of live works of art. His work has been presented at the Palais de Tokyo, Under the Radar Festival (Public Theater), The Watermill Center, Volksbühne Berlin, Prelude Festival, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Otion Front Studio, and Movement Research at Judson Church. His work has been supported by Pepatián, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Abrons Arts Center, YoungArts, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. He is currently a resident of the Devised Theatre Working Group at the Public Theater/Under the Radar Festival under the leadership of Mark Russell. He has worked extensively as a performer originating roles in works by various artists including jaamil olawale kosoko, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Bill Shannon, Robert Wilson, Nia Witherspoon, Lilleth Glimcher, Malcolm Betts X, and Miles Greenberg in venues including New York Live Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Tanz im August, The Walker Art Center, EMPAC, Danspace Project, Superblue, Stanford Live, Dublin Theatre Festival, and MESS Festival.

Queen Drea is a recipient of the 2022 McKnight Foundation Composers Fellowship, 2021 Jeromae Hill Artist Finalist, 2021 Zeitgeist Music Sounding Ground Fellow, 2019 Penumbra Theater ASHE Lab Fellow, and 2017 American Composers Forum Minnesota Emerging Composer awardee. She is a sound alchemist. Mixing up potions laced with looped natural and affected vocals, jagged rhythms, and found sounds, Queen’s compositions are often conceived under the auspices of improvisational settings which is where she thrives most.

Queen Drea has created her own interdisciplinary about depression in the Black community, a music and movement piece titled “From Black Wombs” about two sisters who have lost their parents in the revolutionary war against white supremacy, and a four-movement piece about an African creator goddess named Mawu (Lisa), associated with the Sun and Moon in African Dahomey mythology.

Queen has been commissioned to compose soundscapes for dance companies Ananya Dance Theatre, Black Label Movement, and Brother(h)ood Dance, and composed and designed sound for Twin Citie’s theaters’ Penumbra Theatre’s production of “For Colored Girls'', and Pillsbury House Theater, which she calls her artistic home, designing sound and composing original music for “ The Great Divide: She Persists”, “The Great Divide: Flip the Script”, and “What to Send Up, When it Goes Down” by Aleshea Harris, and was a Pillsbury House Theater 2020 Naked Stages Fellow.

Cast:

jaamil olawale kosoko

Nile Harris

Queen Drea

Sound Composition: Everett Saunders

Production Manager: Shana Crawford

Lighting Design: Serena Wong

Lighting Supervisor: L D Armon