Selected Curation and Performance
Curatorial Statement:
For all my work I cultivate caring research, personal attention, and work that transcends beyond aesthetics. When I curate I seek to bring together not just works or performances, but people. In my programming I highlight works by people experiencing marginalization through events that are both vibrant in energy and thoughtful in content. I connect artists who are unconsciously vibrating together and use my organizational skills to give them all a space to sing. It is my purpose to create space to uplift all people, but especially black artists as gods, to bring balance and truth to their experiences. This could take the form of gallery exhibitions or queer joy events such as dance parties. My ultimate goal is to connect all to the Unconscious through self love and divine awakening.
The Temple of Sirius is a sanctuary in honor of African astrological ancestry, our divine present, and the future we are crafting, all existing in one moment. This is not play but a place of pilgrimage for all people, but especially black people, with the intention of waking the divinity within the observer in this colorful and meditative place. Marginalization, trauma, and an engrained erasure is experienced as systems — and passed generationally, — but through collectivity within art and expression we can rewrite patterns and remember who we are. Each individual being's experience is a direct manifestation of creation energy and therefore is never alone. Art, as the energy release of our universe, is never a solo process as we are unconsciously connected and influenced by each other, by other realities, by the earth, tangerines, the moon, trout, smog, woven fabric, skyscrapers, gnats, the list is infinite. The energy of each artist and artwork has found each other once again, and even your energy as observer has returned to us; welcome back to the Temple of Sirius. You can find more details at the DVAA website.
October 2019 Temple of Sirius
Children of Sirius was a 3 part performance and gallery exhibition that I created as the 2019 Black Box Curatorial Fellow at Vox Populi. The gods have come down to revel in your concepts of time and dimensions. They come as black humanoids, as expansive minds, as artists. This is a declaration, a feast, a war-cry, and a lullaby. Together these voices proclaim that their experience is divine. For 2 nights, 7 black artists/deities performed in the Black Box of Vox Populi followed by an exhibition of sacred relics in the front gallery space of Vox. Click these links to read more about Day 1, Day 2, and the exhibition of Children of Sirius.
June-August 2019 Children of Sirius
June 2019 Garden of
Earthly Delights
I was invited by Bartram’s Gardens to create a queer, costumed Summer Solstice spectacular in southwest Philadelphia. Participants came in costume that played with a magical forest creature theme. There was dancing, a costume contest, and bacchanal of drag and queer performances! The food was by local, black-owned vegan caterer We Are Earf and djing by BB Basura!
GAUDLIKE is a living expression of joy, intersectional queer unity, and divinity. Each of the 14 collaborators of this project is a god, a creator. Each a creator of art and identity. Through fashion, photography, craft, digital art, poetry, performance, and installation this group is GAUDLIKE and radiant in our queer splendor, play, and unashamed self-love.
Special thanks to IndyHall co-working space.
September 2018 GAUDLIKE
A POC Self-Love Event Sponsored by Nybee Beauty Products. Free Hair Care, Cuts, and Loc services were offered as well as performances, collaborative art projects, and vegan food by the black-owned caterer We Are Earf.
April 2018 Brown Sugar
O:O stands for "othered others." This phrase recognizes black people who feel marginalized or even persecuted within the black community, the arts community, and the black arts community. This was the 5th annual 2-day festival of all mediums. A celebration of radical Black joy!
February 2018 O:O Our Black Arts Festival
July 2017 NYC Poetry Festival
I was an invited artist at the NYC Poetry Festival where my Mushroom Muses and I (Mother Hawkmoth) sold my illustrations and performed poetry accompanied by improvisational dance and audience participation.
May 2017 EP Release for Kingsley Ibeneche
I curated an EP Release debut and party for Kingsley Ibeneche at the Circle of Hope Gallery Space. In addition to Kingsley Ibeneche's performance, the night included two opening acts by Lauren Scott and Echelon the Seeker, various dance performances, and a dance party!
February 2017 Black Arts Festival
For 3 years I have curated the annual Black Arts Festival in Philadelphia, PA. It is a multi-day event with a gallery exhibition, musical performances, monologues, and poetry. The Black Arts Festival serves as a radical celebration of Black Joy to bring all people together to unite as a community, recharge, and celebrate Black Excellence.
In 2017 the festival was 2 days, February 3rd and 4th at the Circle of Hope Gallery Space in South Philadelphia. We had over 40 artists and over 500 people visit and celebrate with us.
December 2016 Free First Sunday at the Barnes Foundation
For the Barnes Foundation's 2016 December Free First Sunday I brought in three performance groups that fit within the theme of "Sensation." I wanted to capture the diverse, and sometimes overwhelming, textures of the Barnes Foundation Collection through the percussion-based rhythm band, AveNoir, the zany performance art group Yackez, and internationally renowned Opera tenor, Richard Troxell.
March 2015 Millennium Oblivion
Millennium Oblivion was my first major curated event during my Sopomore year at the University of the Arts. The concept of the show was to have a major gallery and performance exhibition without the aid of the University. We had over 40 performance and visual artists, and over 200 people in attendence.