Postscript Event: Searching for Hurston: Writing Black Modernity
Photos by Erik Ljung
Free.
Join us for a Postscript event following last summer's residency with Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group. The event focuses on the impact of Zora Neale Hurston, author of Moses, Man of the Mountain--one of the original inspirations for Wilson's Moses(es)--on artists across generations and disciplines. Participants include Fo Wilson, Jessica Lynne, Shelleen Greene, and Portia Cobb.
What we are reading and watching:
Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
Zora Neale Hurston, "Fieldwork," 1928
Susan Manning, "Reggie Wilson and the Traditions of American Dance" and related
articles in TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies, Spring 2015, Vol. 59, No. 1.
Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens
Movement Research Performance Journal 47, October 2015: Portfolio devoted to Reggie Wilson offering "multiple framings and perceptions of Reggie's work."
More about Movement and Migration, our project with Reggie Wilson: http://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/movement-and-migration
This event is supported in part by the Herzfeld Foundation.
About the Participants
Fo Wilson uses constructed space and furniture forms to create experiences that reposition historical objects and/or aesthetics in a contemporary context and offers audiences new ways of thinking about and interacting with history. Wilson earned a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago. A grant recipient of Creative Time, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Propeller Fund, her design work is included in the collection of The Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design. Wilson has been awarded residencies or fellowships at ACRE, Haystack Mountain Center for Craft, Purchase College, and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Her solo exhibition, "Eliza's Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities," opens at the Lynden Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee in 2016 and includes an outdoor installation as well as work in the gallery. She leads a team that has been awarded a public art commission for the Burnham Wildlife Corridor, a project of the Chicago Parks District and The Field Museum, and was a 2015 3Arts Award awardee.
Jessica Lynne is a Brooklyn based writer and arts administrator. She received her BA in Africana Studies from NYU and has been awarded residencies and fellowships from The Sarah Lawrence College Summer Writers Seminar, Callaloo, and The Center for Book Arts. Jessica contributes to publications such as Art in America, The Art Newspaper, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Pelican Bomb. She's co-editor of ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism from Black perspectives, and a founding editor of the now defunct (but still special) Zora Magazine. Currently, Jessica is a development officer at The Museum of Arts and Design. Find her on Twitter and Instagram at @lynne_bias.
Shelleen Greene is an associate professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She received her doctorate from the Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include Italian cinema, race and representation, and globalization and visual culture.
Portia Cobb is a multi-media media artist whose time-based work moves between auto-ethnographic video and digital documentary photographic essay. She is deeply interested in the complexity of rooted identity, and the genealogy of place--drawn from her family’s Gullah Ogeechee cultural heritage in the Charleston region of South Carolina. She is developing an installation exploring the theme of “grace” as a response to tragic events that took place in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Portia Cobb is an associate professor in the Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
