'HARD WORK 1: Joiri Minaya / Marisa Williamson' @ Skowhegan [NYC/USA]

Friday, October 30, 2015
7:30pm  8:30pm
136 West 22nd Street New York, NY, 10011 United States

JOIRI MINAYA
SUNSET SLIT

In Sunset slit Joiri Minaya will emulate the image of a woman emerging from water and whipping her hair back. Usually presented in a still or slowed down form, this pop-culture image carries a tired narrative that builds fantasies of leisure and pleasure from the cliché pairing of women and idyllic landscapes. By reproducing this idealized gesture over and over again in the incongruous, almost opposite context of a NYC basement, Minaya attempts to create a space where meaning can be transformed through the absurd and the pointlessly laborious.

Sunset slit is part of a body of work that deals generally with otherness, self-consciousness and displacement, and specifically addresses how the people and environments of the tropical regions have been historically idealized by others, and the subsequent internalization and re-performing of those fantasies by the subjects in which they originate in the first place.

The performance involves a moderate amount of dark ink that will be splattered in one direction. Consider wearing black to avoid staining or keeping a safe distance from the space directly behind the performer.

Joiri Minaya (A ’13) was born in New York, U.S, in 1990, growing up in the Dominican Republic. She graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales(ENAV) in Santo Domingo, D.R. (2009), the Altos de Chavón School of Design in La Romana, D.R. (2011) and Parsons the New School for Design (2013).

Exhibitions include a solo show at the Centro de la Imagen in Santo Domingo, and group shows at Rush Arts Gallery, MoCADA, Grace Exhibition Space, Trestle Gallery, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery and ARC Magazine’s New Media Exhibition at the Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival 13.

Minaya is the recipient of both the Great Prize and the Audience Award in the XXV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes at the Centro León in Santiago, D.R., the Great Prize of the XXVII National Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo, and the Bluhdorn and Parsons Scholarships in 2011. She has participated in the 2015 NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, the 2014 L-EST European Performing Arts and TRansmedia Lab at MA Scène Nationale, Montbéliard, France and will begin a residency at Guttemberg Arts this winter.

MARISA WILLIAMSON
WORKOUT WITH SALLY HEMINGS

In WORKOUT with Sally Hemings, Marisa Williamson’s perennial persona—the slave and mistress of Thomas Jefferson—will lead audience members in an energizing and enlightening workout. Join Hemings and her SolidaritySquad (Jesus Benavente [A ‘12] and Kathy Cho) in a realistic, full-body, and fun routine, focusing on strength, endurance, affect, and labor. Tone that butt! Flatten those abs! Whittle away or build up you body! Your socioeconomic mobility depends on it! Together we’ll explore work and the embodiment of fitness in our culture and over time.

With this routine,

...tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

—Thomas Jefferson

Marisa Williamson (A '12) is an New York-based performance and video artist. She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her M.F.A. from CalArts. She was a participant in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 2014-2015. She attended ACRE Summer Residency in 2014 and Shandaken Project at Storm King this Fall. She is currently participating in the New Museum Seminars program. Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, and Chicago.

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