#sexypink/Performance and Installation Art

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Sexypink - Parthenogenesis: A Maze of silence within a Roar - A K U Z U R U

April 2024

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Sexypink - Celebrating the achievement of Bahamian Ceramic Artist Anina Major.

(she/her) is a visual artist from the Bahamas. Her decision to voluntarily establish a home contrary to the location in which she was born and raised motivates her to investigate the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia, and identity. Often taking form in a wide range of media, including installation, sculpture, time-based video and performance, it references tropical ecologies as well as historical and contemporary ethnography. Her work unpacks the emotional complexities inherent to the transcultural dialogue that surfaces when mapping the migration of traditions versus foreign influences. 

Through her making, Major acts as a cultural strategist and works to inspire critical dialogue around developing cultural identities and building the appropriate platforms for this discourse. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Art Studio Program. Her work has been exhibited in The Bahamas, across the United States, and Europe.

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Sexypink - Akuzuru - Upcoming Performance

S P O R A MYSTICA

a new environmental performance work

by   A k u z u r u

COMMISSIONED BY : The National Museum and Art Gallery of Trinidad & Tobago -  

Venue : City Of Port Of Spain -Fort San Andres -

In celebration of WORLD ART DAY 2023

Themed : Performance is Art

Artist Proposal  (Posters Attached ) From The Artist

S P O R A MYSTICA is an ode to the purity of existence and the mystically imbued qualities of Spores . This inter galactic experience of the cosmic microscopic unseen suggests an inter-dimensional phenomena within the traversing patterns of Spores . Humans and animals breathe in , literally inhale millions of spores continually .

Each breath carries the essential life force of spores that makes existence a magnificent  intangible happening . Spores are a continuum of new births .

The artist through performative communion with the unseen microscopically powerful S P O R A will be attuned through various gestures and stamps of sound , movement , texture and form as her body / bodies as spore selves navigate the grounds of Fort San Andres , connecting the trees as sentinels with the architectural and mounted historical structures .

As an environmental intervention , this multi-sensorial work will most pointedly engage the surrounding ocean -the water element- which flanks the earth itself becoming an integral core of this exploration .This process as a cumulative effect will transmit the essential vibrations , toward a heightened sense of awareness resulting , in a deeply transformative experience so that a communion of elements and interstitial spaces amplifies the mystical prowess of our spore selves within the whole of S P O R A as an Omnipotent force .

© A k u z u r u  2023

A k u z u r u  Artist Biography

A k u z u r u  is an Avant Garde artist whose practice spans 30 years . She produces through a TransDisciplinary praxis straddling multiple approaches . Her thought provoking works invokes the unseen , where the material and the immaterial are as connectedly interspersed as the immanent and transcendent . Primarily environmental using vast spaces in the natural world and connected into the spatial appropriations of interiors of building spaces , her other- worldly forms in her installations or 'spatial works ' and expansive Performative AkTivations inoculates into the viewer deeply indelible emotive experiences .

The artist has established a multi-faceted lexicon of performative works which include her Ak-tionisms, Spontaneous Art, Spatial Works, Gesture Works, Experiential Art, whether live or on film. With the natural world and metaphysics being central to her process, her immersive complex presentations are expansive , often multi-locational , involving a multitude of persons whom she calls her co-performers, as well as deeply engaging solo expressions.

Having lived, studied and practiced in Trinidad, the UK and Nigeria for many years, her Total Art experiences are conceptually and physically intense - integral - often interak-tive, multi-genre constructions,  emphasizing performance art's radical axis as a dynamic and powerful art form.

This Environmental-Transdisciplinary artist has become known for her multi-genre works and her many performances including her iconic healing chambers and large sculptural-installations consistently presented worldwide at prestigious institutions and powerful natural environments including the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States.

A pioneer in the radical presence-ing of performance art in Trinidad and the Caribbean, her evolvement as an artist during a thirty year practice, has exhibited a steady embrace of performance art as her primary focus in her TransDisciplinary visions, a metaphysically dynamic intersection of the human and natural world; encapsulating the science of space, light, sound, silence , movement, gesture and nuance .

The artist has been the recipient of numerous International awards from the Prince Claus Fund- Netherlands , the City of Munich- Germany and the Commonwealth Foundation- UK .

Significant solo presentations at important institutions include the National Museum of Trinidad & Tobago , PAMM - Perez Art Museum Miami in the US and the Buchheim Museum - Germany .

A k u z u r u  was also Art Lecturer for experimental practice at the University of the West Indies -Trinidad & Tobago during fifteen years.

Her project -Earthology- is an epic ongoing global opus.

© A k u z u r u  2023

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~Sexypink~   Natusha Croes - To sing, speak and move on behalf of an ecological engagement. I am a plethora of beings creating a sense of belonging through a chain reaction of performative interventions, honouring one location at the time, unraveling a state of deep listening, heightened bodily awareness. Directed currently at the island of my origin. Aruba, the multiculturalism that it breeds, the heritage, a multiple state of identity, and how a gentler, much soothing relationship can come to be. Primarily communicated through the audio-visual forum of live art, video and film. 

REDJI (Reginald Sénatus), born in 1994, grew up in a district of downtown Port-au-Prince (Haiti), near the artists and cabinetmakers of the Grand-Rue. In 2010, he joined Atis Rezistans, a community of artists specializing in salvage sculpture. Since 2011, Redji has participated in several editions of the Ghetto Biennale de Port-au-Prince. In the 2017 edition, he presented an installation entitled "Cartography of Port-Au-Prince" and took stock of the socio-economic difficulties of the population. He won the first prize of the biennial, and also that of 2019 with a new artistic installation entitled "Walls and Doors of Vertières".

~Sexypink~  Maria Govan - From the island of New Providence, In the Bahamas, Maria, a self taught filmmaker, with an early passion for film, began her journey working in production at the young age of sixteen. She worked a time in Los Angeles and then returned home where she spent a decade making small, local, guerilla style documentaries. This lay the foundation for her craft. Govan then scripted her first narrative feature "Rain," which she directed and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008 and licensed to Showtime networks. In 2012 she moved to Trinidad and in 2015 wrote and directed her second narrative feature "Play the Devil" which received a significant grant from Creative TT. "Play the Devil" was selected for Ventana Sur in Argentina and Premiera Miradada in IFF Panama, and premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2016. In 2018, Govan was hired to direct her first episode of television on the show Queen Sugar, which is produced by Ava Duvernay and Oprah Winfrey. She is currently in development of several television and film projects and continues to seek writing and directing opportunities both in the region and beyond.

~Sexypink~  ~Sexypink~  Daphné Menard completed his studies in theatre in July 2015 in Haiti. Practicing contemporary dance, music, theater and writing, he founded “Sol Scène Association, ” an initiative interested in transdisciplinary research with the body as the raw material. He created in November 2016, "Omayra, the choir of the abyss," a play that questions the power of this world, rendered so weak in front of certain situations. Since October 2018, he has implemented the Transdo art creation laboratory between Haitian and Dominican artists. He organised a cross-disciplinary play in March 2020 in Santo Domingo questioning the concept of memory on the island. Photo credit: Valérie Baeriswyl 

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~Sexypink~ · La Vaughn Belle is a visual artist working in a variety of disciplines that include: video, performance, painting, installation and public art. She explores the material culture of coloniality and her art presents counter visualities and narratives that challenge colonial hierarchies and invisibility. She has exhibited in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe. Her work has been featured in a wide range of media including: the NY Times, Politiken, VICE, The Guardian, Caribbean Beat, the BBC and Le Monde. She holds an MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, an MA and a BA from Columbia University in NY. Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands. Photo credit: Nicole Canegata

#Sexypink~ Sofia Gallisá Muriente is a Puerto Rican visual artist working mainly with video, film, photography, and text. Through multiple approaches to documentation, her work deepens the subjectivity of historical narratives, examining formal and informal archives, popular imaginaries and visual culture. She has been a resident artist of Museo La Ene (Argentina), Alice Yard (T&T), Solar (Tenerife) and the Smithsonian. She was also Co-director of the artist-run organization Beta-Local from 2014 to 2020. Her work has been exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, the Getty’s PST: LA/LA, ifa Galerie in Berlin and CCA Glasgow, among others.

~Sexypink~  Taisha Carrington is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, sculpture, body adornment, and installation. Her work seeks to promote solidarity with the land and investigate the liminality of life in the Caribbean after colonialism and into the Anthropocene. Taisha invents ‘devices’ and explores performances for self-healing and facilitation of social dialogue about climate justice while proposing methods for rebirth, reclamation, and reimagining the value of Caribbean people and communities. Taisha received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2018 and currently works in Barbados collaborating with biochemists, farmers and medical practitioners to pool knowledge and resources and shed light on climate change.

~Sexypink~  Patrick Lafayette is a blind individual who has made significant contributions the lives of persons with disabilities in Jamaica, the Caribbean, and internationally. He was the first visually disabled individual to be employed to a major commercial radio entity in Jamaica in the 1980’s when he worked with Radio Jamaica’s Fame FM. He was a founding member of KLAS FM and later Kool 97 FM. He went on to become station manager at Kool 97 FM before leaving to start his own production company, Twin Audio Network in 2007. He also started his online radio station in 2015. Currently he works with persons with disabilities in Jamaica and the US re the use of the I-phone and other adaptive technologies and was featured by Apple in 2017. Lafayette has collaborated with foreign and local organisations, including the Dennis Brown Trust, VP Records, the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC, Choice FM in London, and XM Satellite Radio in the USA, to document and produce the history of Jamaica’s music culture. He is married to Indi and has two children, Leila and Djvan.