Performance Studies Ph.D. Candidate Adrienne Edwards will present "Afroglossia" as part of the Performa 17 Biennial, November 1-19, 2017.
About the Show
Coined and organized by Performa Curator Adrienne Edwards, the title is a neologism that riffs off of the term polyglossia, defined as multiple languages co-existing in one area, for which the abbreviation “Afro” references the incredible complexity, heterogeneity, and multiplicity that is Africa. AFROGLOSSIA highlights a range of artistic voices and coalesces diverse perspectives from various regions of the African continent, into a single program platform, allowing viewers to experience distinct approaches to experimental interdisciplinary art and ideas currently being made by artists from Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa. Questions of what is radical, how the conditions of everyday life inform artistic choices, and what constitutes experimentation in cross-boundary performance emerge as important animating forces in the program’s commissions and projects. AFROGLOSSIA’s commissions are each points of convergence with each artist taking up the specific set of social, historical, political, and economic scenarios and experiences in their own distinctly formal ways. Intermingling fiction, poetry, essays, films, performances, painting, music, videos, and photography, the program provides a means through which we can contemplate the intersection of radical art and radical politics as articulated by artists themselves from Africa and its diaspora.