not a performance
not a performance brought together improvised movement with self-recorded audio and objects I made, to challenge our collective responses to current political repression. The audio was recorded from my original writings; and I urged the audience to move with me, finding their movements, rather than remain passive spectators.
Your Grief Is Welcome Here
Your Grief Is Welcome Here was a performance installation and ritual about mourning the immense human losses between 2023-2025, due to U.S. foreign policy. The swarm of red star bodies painted on canvas were inspired by ancient Egyptians’ depictions of stars on tomb ceilings which represented the deceased rising to heaven and the five outstretched points of the body- head, 2 arms, 2 legs. Some of the star bodies are missing limbs.
Below the red canvas is a canvas covered in clay and gesso, on which I drew by moving my arms upwards and outwards while kneeling on the ground. It was a repetitive gesture of mourning and release embodied in the drawing. As part of “The Spiritual is Political” I did a performance in front of the wall installation, where I buried and unburied a small form similar to the Egyptian grain mummy in a bed of dirt and crushed roses, creating my own version of Coptic resurrection rituals.
Ecologías Solidarias
In Ecologías Solidarias, artists Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, Asma Kazmi, and Katreen Toukhy created a durational performance enacting cycles of destruction and mutual care among people, objects, and environments. The artists studied the RISD museum, noting their connections to objects in the collections that came from their Puerto Rican, Pakistani, and Egyptian heritages, respectively.
From these observations, and their reflections on heightened neocolonial destruction abroad, the artists performed a continuous cycle of excavating personal objects from plaster pillars (similar to pillars in the courtyard’s architecture), laborious destruction of the plaster pillars, and alchemical transformation of the remains, then placed throughout the garden. These actions questioned static preservation versus creative transformation of harmful histories and the role of artists in subverting colonial collections through mutual care and solidarity.
