The Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film, and Literature

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The Kitchen Center for Video, Music, Dance, Performance, Film, and Literature The Kitchen Center for video, music, dance, performance, film, and literature Fall 2016 Season Upcoming Fall 2016 Upcoming Winter 2017 The Kitchen presents Sondra Perry: Resident Evil Philippe Quesne: La Mélancolie des November 2–December 10. dragons In 1971, Sun Ra said “Black people need a January 10–14, 8PM. $25. mythocracy, not a democracy because they’ll A band of longhaired metalheads decide that the never make it in history.…Truth is not snowy forest where their hatchback has stalled permissible for me to use because I’m not might be the perfect location to build a new righteous and holy, I’m evil, that’s because I’m heavy metal-themed amusement park. A help- black and I’m not subscribed to any types of ful stranger is invited into their world of classic righteousness.” Perry’s new video examines this rock, medieval recorders, and large inflatable active disinterest in the respectability that sculptures. An international audience favorite, blackness has been perpetually asked to earn by this three-dimensional poem is full of visual white culture. Using the lens of the Alien movie wonder, joy and melancholy, and sincere delight franchise—one which has been providing in human existence. Presented by The Kitchen allegories of colonialism and mutability for as part of The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Xaviera Simmons: CODED decades—Perry’s work asks: how do agents of Festival. power behave when their subjects become absolutely unpredictable, fluidly inhabiting Raúl De Nieves and Colin Self: The Fool societal norms in order to destroy them? Curated February 9–11, 8PM. $15. by Lumi Tan. The Kitchen presents Raúl De Nieves and Colin Self’s The Fool, a chamber opera scored in four Steven Reker: Mixtape Exchange acts for chorus and string ensemble. The Fool is December 10, 7–9PM. FREE. an allegorical journey drawing an ante-narrative December 8–9, 8pm The Mixtape Exchange is a gathering for all around time, beauty, communion, and mortality. music lovers, nerds, makers, and freaks. Craft a The Fool is the spirit in search of experience. The special mix of the music you are currently Fool is both the beginning and the end, neither listening to and put it on a cassette, CD, and otherwise, betwixt and between. The Fool download link, or thumb drive and bring it to The is a story. Starring Colin Self as the Old Woman, Kitchen. The exchange is set up so that you will Raúl De Nieves as The Fool and the Dog, not know who you are going to be trading with! Alexandra Drewchin as the Child, and Mehron Steven Reker hosts and DJs as you mingle with Abdollmohammadi as the Mother. Organized by fellow music enthusiasts, have a drink, and take Matthew Lyons. home some new tunes. These performances were preceded by an exhibition, also called CODED, which was on view at The Kitchen, June Synth Nights: Blondes, James Campbell, 22–July 29, 2016. and I.U.D. December 15, 8PM. $10. This Synth Nights triple bill brings Blondes, Xaviera Simmons: CODED is made possible with commissioning support from Jerome Foundation; many individual James Campbell, and I.U.D. together to contributions; annual program grants from Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol celebrate the release of their record Wade Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Howard Gilman Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Guyton Kunsthalle Zürich, an album featuring Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the their performances at the Swiss institution in 2013. The record will be available for sale during support of Governor Andrew Cuomo. the performance. The 4 LP vinyl record also serves as a catalog for the Kunsthalle Zürich exhibition, and includes a double gatefold that unfolds into a model of the Guyton installation. CODED (2016) WORLD PREMIERE Director, Choreographer, Writer: Xaviera Simmons Dancers/Choreographers: Sheila Anozier Belinda Becker Jacinta Paniagua Vlach Narrator: Jamyl Dobson Your tenderness is the path towards the sea Chance Operator: it is the south and tomorrow Tigest Selam (text from CODED) Vocal Coach/Assistant Musical Director: Alicia Hall Moran —Xaviera Simmons Video Editor: Amy Leonard Sound Producer: Josh Werner Stage Manager: Dani Prados Organized for The Kitchen by Matthew Lyons with curatorial assistance from Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi. ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES York, a building-wide performance and installation at The Kitchen NYC, The ICA Boston among many others. Xaviera Simmons’ (Director, Choreographer, Visual Artist, Writer) body of work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and In 2017 Simmons will perform major solo and group exhibitions, installation. She defines her studio practice as rooted in an ongoing including a time in research at The Schlesinger Library | Radcliffe investigation of experience, memory, abstraction, present and future Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard in preparation for a cinematic/ histories—specifically shifting notions surrounding landscape, sculptural exhibition at The Radcliffe Galleries and the Cambridge character development and formal processes. Simmons is committed Commons and newly commissioned work for Flux Exchange, Atlanta equally to the examination of different artistic modes and processes; Georgia. for example, she may dedicate part of a year to photography, another part to performance, and other parts to installation, video, and sound Simmons has been on the faculty of graduate departments of Yale works—keeping her practice in constant and consistent rotation, shift, University, School of The Art Institute Chicago and Columbia University and engagement. and she sits on the board of directors at Printed Matter and Spaceworks, two amazing non-profits based in New York City that Simmons received her BFA from Bard College (2004) after spending continually need financial support to insure that New York remains on two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans Atlantic Slave the cutting edge of visual, performing and creative arts. Trade with Buddhist Monks. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005) while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Sheila Anozier (Dancer/Choreographer) has lived in NYC for most of Flanigan Studio. Simmons has exhibited nationally and internationally her life, but her core and childhood is housed in Haiti where art is where major exhibitions and performances include: The Museum of prevalent to all aspects of life. Sheila began a formal training in dance Modern Art, MoMA PS1, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The at Long Island University, but it was with the support and inspiration of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Public Art Fund, The dance mentor Pat Hall she found her freedom in it. Notable Sculpture Center, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; performances have taken Sheila to venues and festivals across the David Castillo Gallery and The Savannah College Of Art and Design and United States and abroad, including Ha Noi Opera House & White The PAMM, Miami among others. Palace Convention Center in Vietnam with singer and political activist Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary); Ageha in Tokyo, Japan with Her works are in major museum and private collections including singer/dancer Wunmi Olaiya; Nuits Atypiques de Langon in France, Deutsche Bank, UBS, The Guggenheim Museum, The Agnes Gund Montreal International Jazz Festival in Canada; Vollos Festival in Art Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Studio Greece; The Hague Holland Dance Festival in the Netherlands; and the Museum in Harlem, MOCA Miami, The Nasher Museum Of Art at Duke Altstdtherbst Festival in Germany. University and The Perez Art Museum, Miami. New York performances include: Lincoln Center “Out of Doors,” The Simmons is the recipient of significant and numerous awards including Joyce Theatre, Town Hall, Dance Theatre Workshop, The Kitchen, a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants To Artists Award for Joe’s Pub, and SOB’s, Prospect Park Bandshell, Usdan Center for the Visual Art and a 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Memorial Foundation Creative and Performing Arts and BRIC. Award. Sheila serves as choreographer for Brave New World Repertory Simmons has had multiple major solo and group exhibitions in 2016 Theatre: (Street Scene in 2013, As You Like It in 2010, The Crucible including exhibitions and performances at The Museum Of Modern in 2008 and 2010, The Tempest in 2009 and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Art, a curatorial project at the headquarters of Deutsche Bank, New in 2007), and The Drum and the Seed—a full length theatrical dance production. She performs with Bonga and the Vodou Drums of Haiti, Bethany and Rufus Routs Quartet, and Pat Hall Dancers. Sheila is Jamyl Dobson (Narrator) NY Theater credits: Washer/Dryer (Ma-Yi also a teaching artist who is currently on faculty at Mark Morris Dance Theatre Co.), The Anthem (The Culture Project), The Seven (New Center. York Theatre Workshop), Romeo and Juiet and Ain’t Supposed to Die A Natural Death (Classical Theatre of Harlem), Fondly Do We Hope... Belinda Becker (Dancer/Choreographer) is a DJ, dancer, writer and (Lincoln Center Festival). International tours: Four years as guest artist actor. Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Belinda is well-known on the with the Bill T. Jones/Annie Zane Dance Co., and Zorro. Regional: Of NYC DJ scene, spinning at such clubs including Nells, La Esquina, Ebony Embers (Core Ensemble Co.), The Seven (La Jolla Playhouse), Spur Tree, Jimmy at the James Hotel, the Skylark Lounge and on Radio Hamlet and Two Gentlemen of Verona (PA Shakespeare Festival), and Lily. She was inducted into Paper Magazine’s New York Nightlife Hall Avenue X (Philadelphia Public Theatre Co.). Film/TV: Season 2 of The of Fame. She has been studying and performing Haitian Folklore, and Path (Hulu), A Good Man (PBS/American Masters), Cain (short film) Afro-Cuban dance for over 20 years under Pat Hall and Baba Richard and the independent films Hall Pass and Moments the Go.
Recommended publications
  • Xaviera Simmons '05 Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters
    Xaviera Simmons '05 Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters Xaviera Simmons’s sweeping body of work centers around photography and includes performance, choreography, video, sound, sculpture, and installation. Her interdisciplinary practice is rooted in shifting definitions of landscape; character development; art, political, and social histories; and the interconnectedness of formal processes. Simmons received her bachelor’s degree from Bard College after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage with Buddhist monks retracing the transatlantic slave trade. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art while simultaneously completing a two-year actor training with the Maggie Flanigan Studio. Simmons received Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award and Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award, both in 2018. Her work is part of numerous upcoming exhibitions and projects including Sundown at David Castillo Gallery, Miami; The Restless Earth, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2019); and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places Commission (2018–19), among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include Convene at Sculpture Center, New York; Overlay at Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; and The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line, at Modern Window, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Current and recent museum group exhibitions include The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; MassArt, Boston; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Prospect.4, New Orleans; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Cincinnati Art Museum; and Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco.
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  • Xaviera Simmons at Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro - Burnaway
    6/14/2021 Don’t Forget: Xaviera Simmons at Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro - Burnaway Don’t Forget: Xaviera Simmons at Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro BY SUSAN LEE MACKEY MARCH 11, 2021 https://burnaway.org/daily/dont-forget-xaviera-simmons-at-weatherspoon-art-museum-greensboro/ 1/9 6/14/2021 Don’t Forget: Xaviera Simmons at Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro - Burnaway Xaviera Simmons, Index Two, Composition Three, 2012; Chromogenic color print, 50 x 40 inches. Edition of 3. Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo, Miami. © Xaviera Simmons n view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum is a small exhibition of photographs by Xaviera Simmons, currently the Falk Visiting Artist at UNC Greensboro. https://burnawayO.org/daily/dont-forget-xaviera-simmons-at-weatherspoon-art-museum-greensboro/ 2/9 6/14/2021 Don’t Forget: Xaviera Simmons at Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro - Burnaway Simmons’ artistic works spans multiple genres, and she sees herself as “archivist, image maker, producer, director and sometimes actor.” But her work is not delineated by genres, rather, each O project is part of an ongoing exploration of ideas: abolition, reparations, undoing whiteness, and, especially in this exhibition, archival research. The photographs in this exhibition were made over the course of ten years. Included are six images from her Index series, 2 from her Sundown series, and 1 landscape self-portrait. The Sundown series is named after “sundown towns,” areas in which Black folks and other people of color faced heightened violence after dark. In each Sundown image, Simmons photographs herself holding an archival image for her viewer to confront while she looks elsewhere.
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  • ICA at VCU Presents Major New Exhibition Exploring Representations of Race in Contemporary Art
    ICA at VCU Presents Major New Exhibition Exploring Representations of Race in Contemporary Art Great Force Features Works and Performances by 24 Artists Including New Commissions by Tomashi Jackson, Charlotte Lagarde, and Xaviera Simmons Richmond, VA – October 5, 2019 - The Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) presents Great Force, an exhibition that uses painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance to explore how art can be used to envision new forms of race and representation freed from the bounds of historic racial constructs. The exhibition features new commissions and recent work by an intergenerational group of 24 established and emerging artists, including Pope.L, Sable Elyse Smith, Xaviera Simmons, Charlotte Lagarde, and Tomashi Jackson. Borrowing its title from a quote by novelist and social critic James Baldwin, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do,” Great Force explores how contemporary artists contend with persistent black-white racial bias and inequality in the U.S. The exhibition is curated by ICA Associate Curator Amber Esseiva, an alumna of VCUarts. Great Force is on view at the ICA at VCU from October 5, 2019, through January 5, 2020. For the duration of Great Force, the ICA will convene community discussions about race, representations of the oppressed and the empowered, and how art can become a tool in pursuit of visibility. The exhibition will extend out of the ICA’s galleries to include films, performances, and public discussions which will all serve as catalysts for discussions about race and culture today.
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  • The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Goethe-Institut New York
    MEDIA RELEASE The Studio Museum in Harlem 144 West 125th Street New York, NY 10027 studiomuseum.org/press Contact: Liz Gwinn, Public Relations and Publications Manager [email protected] 646.214.2142 Opening Reception and Press Preview: 6–8 pm, Friday, September 24, 2010 RSVP: [email protected] 212.864.4500 x255 The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Goethe-Institut New York Announce OFF/SITE Pioneering year-long collaboration begins September 24 with Xaviera Simmons: junctures (transmissions to) Xaviera Simmons in studio, 2009, Image courtesy Chris Sanders NEW YORK, September 10, 2010 —The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Goethe-Institut New York are joining forces for an innovative one-year collaboration: OFF/SITE. This unique partnership between two culturally specific institutions features artist projects and public programs in two iconic New York City neighborhoods, Harlem and the East Village. OFF/SITE synthesizes the missions, histories and mandates of both institutions. The Studio Museum and the Goethe-Institut New York share a commitment to specific places, cultures and experiences as well as to global engagement with contemporary art and ideas. They are uniquely suited to co-present a series of exhibitions, perfor- mances, panels and screenings that interrogates concepts including geography, site-responsiveness, community and artistic practice. Xaviera Simmons: junctures (transmissions to), OFF/SITE’s inaugural project, will be on view at the Goethe-Insti- tut Wyoming Building from September 24 to October 27, 2010. A public program featuring Simmons and junctures (transmissions to) collaborators will take place at the Studio Museum at 7 pm on Thursday, October 21.
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  • Xaviera Simmons
    Xaviera Simmons XAVIERA SIMMONS’S body of work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and installation. She defines her studio practice, which is rooted in an ongoing investigation of experience, memory, abstraction, present and future histories-specifically shifting notions surrounding landscape, character development and formal processes, as cyclical rather than linear. In other words, Simmons is committed equally to the examination of different artistic modes and processes; for example, she may dedicate part of a year to photography, another part to performance, and other parts to installation, video, and sound works-keeping her practice in constant and consistent rotation, shift, and engagement. Simmons received her BFA from Bard College (2004) after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist Monks. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005) while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio. Simmons has exhibited nationally and internationally where major exhibitions and performances include: The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Public Art Fund, The Sculpture Center, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; David Castillo Gallery and The Savannah College Of Art and Design among many others. Selected upcoming solo and group exhibitions for 2015 include: Accumulations, Light Work Syracuse, Foto, Annin Arts, London, Number 16, Kemper Museum Of Art, Kansas City, Radical Presence, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco, Where Do We Migrate To, Vamlands Museum, Sweden and When The Stars Begin To Fall, ICA Boston.
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  • Landscapes of Desire How Music Keeps Xaviera Simmonsʹs Art In
    Landscapes of Desire How Music keeps Xaviera Simmonsʹs Art in the flow She is a modern Renaissance woman: In her work, Xaviera Simmons combines every conceivable kind of art form. But the main influences on her have been music, a fascination with landscape, and travel. Jessica Loudis met her for a drink. I meet Xaviera Simmons at a bar in Williamsburg on an unseasonably warm evening at the start of fall. We had planned to get together at her studio in Manhattan, but in the interest of taking a “more fluid” approach to her practice, Simmons is spending less and less time at the studio, and wants to be there only when necessary. She’s tall, with short hair and a kind of casual confidence that suggests she’s not afraid of unfamiliar situations. She’s also perceptive and gracious— she compliments our waiter on his shirt, and at various moments throughout our conversation she checks in to make sure my microphone is working. In lieu of being in the city these days, the artist tells me that she prefers working upstate, where she lives for much of the week, or in dance studios, which she has been frequenting in preparation for an upcoming show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The show is on her mind tonight, and Simmons said she’d been thinking a lot about contemporary dance, Jamaican “daggering,” and particularly the work of Yvonne Rainer and experimental Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She’d also been immersed in what she described as “male homoerotic imagery,” namely Tom Bianchi’s softcore Polaroids of the sculpted men of Fire Island, and the haunting portraits of Alvin Baltrop, a black photographer who captured the clandestine gay Xaviera Simmons.
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  • Xaviera Simmons: CODED June 22 – July 29
    Xaviera Simmons: CODED June 22 – July 29 Opening reception: Wednesday, June 22 from 6 – 8pm. The Kitchen is pleased to present CODED, an exhibition of works by Xaviera Simmons featuring new and recent photographic, audio, text-based sculptural work and ultimately a movement-based performance. Her dynamic interdisciplinary approach to art-making is rooted in an ongoing investigation of experience, memory, and present and future histories, specifically focusing on shifting notions surrounding landscape and character, as well as conversations between formal processes. With CODED, Simmons continues to mine art historical sources, Internet media, and archival images, in this case as they relate to queer history, homoerotic imagery as well as Jamaican dancehall culture, to construct a new, cohesive conceptual territory. Simmons’ particular vocabulary of movement, reference, sense, text, breath, sound, and image offers ways of looking at sexuality, gender, pleasure, and sensuality in a queer context and in an island context. The exhibition is the foundation for a unique choreographic score for the forthcoming performance work. Through the sensual, through movement, her works push towards a committed practice of visual freedom. This project is curated by Matthew Lyons. Xaviera Simmons is a critically acclaimed artist whose body of work spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and installation. Simmons is committed equally to the examination of different artistic modes and processes where, for example, she may dedicate part of a year to photography, another part to performance, and other parts to installation, video, and sound works-keeping her practice in constant and consistent rotation, shift, and engagement. Xaviera Simmons’ CODED is on view June 22 – July 29 at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street).
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  • Public Art Works
    Public Art Works SEASON 1 - EPISODE #3 PUBLIC ART/PUBLIC ACTION Xaviera Simmons & Kate Gilmore, moderated by Paola Mendoza TRT 35:01 JEFFREY WRIGHT: Hi. I’m your host, Jeffrey Wright. And welcome back to the Public Art Fund podcast, Public Art Works. On today’s episode, we want to start by thinking about the intersection between public art and public action. JEFFREY WRIGHT: These can be very different things with very different intents. Public art isn’t by definition political. And public action isn’t by definition, well, art. But there are ways in which artists working in the public sphere can blur these lines—and blur them productively, we think, especially with so many of us here in the United States and in New York City specifically thinking more about public action. Thinking more about the roles our voices and our bodies can play in public space when it comes to speaking up for what we believe is just and right. JEFFREY WRIGHT: According to a 2018 poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans have participated in a public protest and/or political gathering since January 2016. And nearly one in five of those participants had never done so before. New Yorkers are, of course, no exception. PUBLIC VOICE 1: I went to the March for our Lives last year, PUBLIC VOICE 2: I participated in the Women’s March. PUBLIC VOICE 3: The Women’s March, a couple of times. PUBLIC VOICE 4: Last weekend I participated at a march with the Laundromat Workers Association.
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  • 2014 Atlanta Artadia Awardees
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  • Artists Challenge Representation in Socrates Sculpture Park for MONUMENTS NOW by KATE MAZADE • February 28, 2020
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  • 2013 Regional Artist Grant Awards.Pdf
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  • THE BASS MUSEUM of ART 2100 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, FL 33139
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