LIBRARY is a four act performance program that celebrates the library as a space for communal gathering in an expansive reconception of a traditional reading that includes poetry, dialogues, and live performance. Whitney Mallett is the curator and organizer of LIBRARY and the founding editor of The Whitney Review—a new publication that features reviews and criticism of new writing and interviews with writers.
Mallett found inspiration in Jorge Luis Borges’s 1941 story The Library of Babel, which conceives of the universe as an infinite library, reimagining its “labyrinthine…hexagonal galleries, corridors, staircases, mirrors, and reflections” as a strip club, casino, and convention center. The program features a performance by Kellian Delice engaging choreographies of processing; a conversation between Esmé Naumes-Givens, contributing writer to The Whitney Review, and their father David Givens, writer and librarian; a demonstration of poet and painter Whitney Claflin’s language-based card game, its hyper-mediated presentation inspired by televised poker tournaments; and a performance by poet and performer, Maya Martinez, and writer and deputy editor of The Whitney Review, Mani Mekala, combining dance and spoken word.
The Whitney Review creates community around the printed word and LIBRARY embodies the communal function of the library, inspired by the many contributors to The Whitney Review. As the program unfolds, audience members are invited to participate in the ongoing narrative, the infinite act, where the spirit of the library lives on.
Show Category: Performance
¡Cuidado!
Installation
The Neilma Sidney Theatre
Exhibition Hours
November 8 – 24 | Tuesday – Sunday | 12 – 6pm
Free
Opening Performance
Friday, November 8, 2024
7:00pm
Closing Performance
Thursday, November 21, 2024
7:00pm
Adán Vallecillo has been at the forefront of Central American creative and political praxis for decades working in sculpture, installation, and video, with roots in performance and sociology. Vallecillo’s installation and performance, ¡Cuidado!, marks his debut performance in New York. This title holds dual meaning in Spanish: both caution and care. Vallecillo explores this duality through performance and video installation, showcasing the honest experiences of Honduran migrants working as home care aides in New York City. Inspired by and dedicated to Vallecillo’s sister, Mabel Vallecillo, an immigrant who has worked for over two decades caring for the elderly in the United States, this project illuminates the essential but undervalued nature of care work. Vallecillo emphasizes the beauty of caregiving in the midst of a culture that considers mortality to be taboo and generates panic and shame around aging. This framework highlights the political and social relationships between the United States and Honduras. Care also frames Vallecillo’s interpersonal relationships with his community and forms the foundation of his methodologies of working with home care aids who often face issues such as racism, xenophobia, and labor exploitation.
Central to Vallecillo’s approach is extensive on-the-ground research, engaging intimately with communities to create site-specific and locally relevant exhibitions. ¡Cuidado! is informed by a series of interviews with home care aides of different backgrounds, ages, and experiences in Central American neighborhoods such as the South Bronx and Bushwick, as well as conversations with unions that center health care workers’ rights. This research forms the foundation of ¡Cuidado!, conveying the nuances and poetics of care work and giving the audience an intimate yet abstracted view of migrants’ daily lives. The installation will include video work that documents private performances that have taken place in various locations throughout the city. These video works will be displayed in the installation alongside other sculptural, visual, and audio works exploring different modalities of care work. The opening of the exhibition will feature live performances.
¡Cuidado! is the culmination of the inaugural Keith Haring Curatorial Fellowship, curated and co-produced by X Arriaga Cuellar.
Edición en Español
Adán Vallecillo ha estado a la vanguardia en la praxis creativa y política centroamericana durante décadas a través de su trabajo en escultura, instalación, con raíces en performance y sociología. La instalación y performance de Vallecillo, ¡Cuidado!, marca su debut de performance en Nueva York. El título carga doble significado: tanto precaución como cuidado. Vallecillo nos muestra esta dualidad a través de las experiencias vividas por los migrantes hondureños que trabajan como cuidadores de personas de la tercera edad en la ciudad de Nueva York. Inspirado por su hermana Mabel Vallecillo, una inmigrante que ha dedicado más de veinte años al cuidado de ancianos en Estados Unidos, este proyecto ilustra la naturaleza esencial y a su vez subestimada del trabajo de cuidado. Vallecillo destaca la belleza del cuidado dentro de una cultura que considera tabú la mortalidad y genera temor y vergüenza en torno al envejecimiento. A la vez este cuadro resalta las relaciones políticas y sociales entre Estados Unidos y Honduras. El concepto del cuidado también enmarca las relaciones interpersonales de Vallecillo con su comunidad y forma la base para sus metodologías de trabajo con cuidadores de personas envejecidas, quienes a menudo enfrentan problemas tales como el racismo, la xenofobia y la explotación laboral.
La práctica de Vallecillo está centrada en una investigación contínua sobre el terreno, interactuando íntimamente con las comunidades para crear exhibiciones específicas al lugar y localmente relevantes. ¡Cuidado! consiste de una serie de entrevistas con cuidadores de diferentes orígenes, edades y trasfondos, en barrios con grandes poblaciones centroamericanas como el Sur del Bronx y Bushwick, así como en conversaciones con sindicatos que defienden los derechos de los trabajadores de la salud. Esta investigación constituye la base de ¡Cuidado!, transmitiendo los matices y la poesía del trabajo de cuidado y ofreciendo al público una perspectiva íntima y abstracta de la vida diaria de los migrantes. La instalación incluirá obras de video dirigidas por Vallecillo que documentan acciones privadas realizadas en varios lugares de la ciudad. Estas obras de video se exhibirán junto con otras obras escultóricas, visuales y auditivas que exploran diferentes modalidades del trabajo de cuidado. La inauguración de la exposición incluirá performances en vivo.
¡Cuidado! es la culminación del becario curatorial inaugural Keith Haring de Performance Space New York, curada y coproducida por X Arriaga Cuellar.
Nasty & Full
Exhibition
The Keith Haring Theatre
Opening Reception: October 5 | 6:30pm
October 5 – 31 | Tuesday – Sunday | 12 – 6pm
Free
Performance
The Keith Haring Theatre
October 31 | 8pm
Tickets
Keioui Keijaun Thomas: Nasty & Full presents the New York debut of a body of work four years in the making, site-specifically installed for the Keith Haring Theater at Performance Space New York. Through a fusion of voice, video installation, sculpture, and performance, Thomas seeks new pathways to understand and express the foundationally transient nature of being and becoming a doll—a trans femme so flawless and unbound she is no longer considered real.
Thomas’s artwork emerges from an iterative process informed by her writing and performance; her practice is linguistic as much as it is bodily. With latex, paper bags, pillars and bricks of repurposed materials, Thomas thoughtfully builds a fluid space, black and blue, all imbued with elements signifying care that build upon and depart from past bodies of work throughout her career.
A series of sculptures aptly titled Waterbodies mark the gallery floor in two portal-like ripples of blue nitrile gloves that surround the blackened, resilient figures of tree stumps; carbonized fuel for the new world. Although stationary, each Waterbody holds movement, caught between buoyancy and wading.
Stationed throughout the perimeter of Nasty & Full are a selection of twelve Paper Bag Soldiers, made by Thomas between 2022-2024. Some shown for the first time, these sculptures are vessels of compact time, loosely packed with material such as fast food baskets, used latex glove packaging, and other remnants from Thomas’s past exhibitions, installations, and performances that now become elements of the artist’s archive.
Contained within the world of Nasty & Full is the video trilogy Come Hell or High Femmes made between 2020-2023. The videos are projected to life size proportions on three custom-made screens, and suspended from the ceiling with manila rope typically used on large ships and in the boating industry. The video trilogy is presented in three “Acts” which appear and disappear in three sequences of moving image and audio. This process of layering and overlapping image and sound—that also appears in Thomas’s live performances—is central to Thomas’s practice. It is one way her work continues to build upon itself and create new worlds and experience–ever expanding.
This timeless world is for us, offering moments to acknowledge, reflect on, and move through realities that can feel oppressive and untenable, with self-fulfillment always in sight. Transfiguration for the artist is not a destination, but a tool that can act as a shield and life force, allowing dolls to move through worlds and show up wholeheartedly in our truth. Unique and unified, she will meet you there.
Keioui Keijaun Thomas: Nasty & Full culminates with the one and only New York premiere of the live performance from which this body of work originated, Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise, on Halloween night (October 31).
Keioui Keijaun Thomas: Nasty & Full is curated by Isis Awad as Executive Care*.
*Please Note: This production contains strobe lighting and haze effects which may be disruptive to people who are sensitive.
Funding: Keioui Keijaun Thomas: Nasty & Full is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Photo: Keioui Keijaun Thomas, Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls, Abrons Art Center, 2023. Photo by Christopher Sonny Martinez. Come Hell or High Femmes was made possible with funding from The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.
Production Credits:
Lighting Designer: Beaudau Karel Banks
Video Engineer: Matthew Deinhart
Audio Engineer: Jonah Rosenberg
Production Manager: Andy Sowers
Screen Stretcher: Žilvinas Jonuśas
Install / Fabrication Crew:
Adrienne Swan
Noah Mourra
Kali Van Horn
Ansel Combs
Robin Ediger-Seto
Joe Pegorsch
Sergey Sutt
Rodney Perez
Collina’s Horse Girl Season
Aligning with her presentation for New York Fashion Week, Hillary Taymour, designer and founder of cult-favorite fashion label, Collina Strada, offers a glimpse into her childhood as a self-proclaimed “horse girl.” Reimagining the all-American state fair as a night-long, multi-room performance program and party, models gallop on hobby horses and leap over hurdles, guests are invited to play games, eat carnival food, as country music plays from the speakers all night amongst stacked bales of hay. Encapsulating the essence of horse girl culture, our theaters transform into Collina Land for one night only, where chaos and absurdity reign.
Abrazos de Luz
Access Provisions: ASL Interpretation, CART, and Audio Description
Abrazos de Luz is a performance evening showcasing four artists: Koyoltzintli, Alx Velozo, Mónica Palma, and Nima Jeizan, curated by Guadalupe Maravilla. Abrazos de Luz is rooted in the belief that all entities—whether birds, plants, rocks, the ocean, food, animals, buildings, cars, or even a hospital chair—possess intrinsic energy. Guadalupe chose these four artists because of their roles in their communities and who they represent in our society. Animism has been central to many ancient cultures’ spiritual perspectives, and it also plays a pivotal role in this performance event and the artists performing. Maravilla highlights the four artists’ individual artistic practices and their existence as individuals who channel love and empathy into everyone around them. Their energy, and energy like theirs, is especially important right now considering how our world constantly challenges us with unwanted wars, political turmoil, forced migrations, overall mental health issues, and the influx of news and information.
As part of the evening’s rituals, Guadalupe has invited these four artists to perform and bring an offering—a home recipe of a beverage to share with the audience during intermission—to welcome everyone into our space.
Alx Velozo’s Take it explores using their medical records as a performance score, drawing parallels between contemporary medical industrial spaces, peep shows, freak shows, and medical theater.
For this participatory performance, Koyoltzintli will enact an invocation to the four terrestrial energies—fire, earth, water, and air—and the cosmic energy that activates them, known as undifferentiated form, chaos, path, the weaver, and/or love. Four participants will be invited to take part in this invocation by coming to the stage and playing along with her.
Cae mi voz is an active drawing involving ropes and levers that constrain and outline the artist’s movement around an area. Cae mi voz can also be seen as a Rube Goldberg machine, a process that accomplishes by complex means what could otherwise be done simply. The artist uses a pulley system of hand-dyed and braided cochineal rope to move around the room, making clear stops to collect or complete an action. As the performance evolves, a clear unifying thread or braid reminds the viewer that all actions and forces in life are connected.
“Caught between an object and a being (subject), I will become the pomegranate. A chainmail of fruit husks oozes with tie-dyed horse hair filaments. A vacant body, the husk becomes a fruitless vessel, bearing dried seeds that rattle like bones. The rattling echoes a world that is not yet here. The rattling of a glass instrument. I live in the future with the innate knowledge of my past, masquerading as a body in the presence of turbulent times; masquerading as in masking—to shelter, a shell, a husk, a cocoon built for ceremonies; a ball. I wish to transcend the present time, moving into a simultaneously prehistoric and future form. I will become the pomegranate.”
*Please note masks are required for this event.