for the sake of dancing in the street
June 3 – July 29, 2023
Gallery Hours: Mon-Fri 11am-4pm
Co-presented and curated by OXY ARTS, LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) and Yasmine Nasser Diaz.
https://oxyarts.oxy.edu/exhibitions/sake-dancing-street
What tools are adequate to confront the forceful patriarchal power structures that continue to control femme and nonbinary bodies every day, across the world? Do we fight power with more power? Or can we dance our way towards revolution?
These questions inform the movements that are documented, amplified, and called into existence through the works in these rooms. Movements that use movement as a liberatory practice emerge as a through-line between public and private space, and articulate the inseparability of individual battles for personal freedoms from collective struggles for justice and bodily autonomy. These movements use disruption, joy and irreverence as critical tactics, along the way reclaiming sensuality and questioning the limits of cultural approval.
for the sake of dancing in the street invites us to witness and wonder what is possible when bodies that have been subject to control transform themselves into tools of resistance and empowerment. The body is centered as a site of simultaneous realities; from powerful and gentle, to humiliated and resilient, both subject and object, yet neither strictly feminine nor masculine. Through forceful collective presence and potent, but often private, individual action, these works explore the potential to invoke change and destabilize existing patriarchal power structures around the world.
Although these artists’ works emerge from various geographical and cultural contexts, the layers of their influence reverberate back and forth. Histories, chants, and safety tactics get shared through zines, online, through apps, through whispers and shouts. These works celebrate the interconnectedness of feminist and queer resistance across time and space. Their shared aims towards liberation, bodily autonomy, and reframing oppressive histories and structures, form an intertwining constellation and create new lineages of possibility.
Artists:
LASTESIS
Morehshin Allahyari
Yasmine Nasser Diaz
Ava Ansari
Caitlin Abadir-Mullally
Entangled Roots Press
Geochicas
Raja Bella Hicks
Related Programming
All events are free and open to the public.
June 3, 6 – 9pm
Opening Reception | Press preview, 5pm
Original dance performance by TCS at 6:30 and 8pm
DJ set by Carol Ohair
June 22, 7-10pm
Workshop: Social Media for Social Justice
Facilitated by Mandy Harris Williams / Feminist Center for Creative Work (FCCW)
July 8
Dance Workshop – 1pm
Performance – 6pm
Algerian Raï dance workshop and performance led by Esraa Warda
July 20, 6pm
Joyland – Film Screening
Curated by Womxn in Windows
July 27, 6pm
Selected Shorts – Film Screening
Curated by Womxn in Windows
July 29, 6pm
Poetry Reading
Facilitated by TQR
Exhibition and programming made possible with generous support from the Mellon Foundation, the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the Wilhelm Family Foundation.
