MV BROWN, SOL'SAX, LEAH ARON, JANA ASTINOV
GES is bringing together an expression of our collective anger, poetry and kink. Please join us this Friday as we present Performance Artists MV Brown, Sol Sax, Jana Paradis and Leah Aarons
MV BROWN [SCOTLAND]
Madeleine Virginia Brown is a visual artist based in Glasgow. Her practice is primarily performance based and privileges the human body, exploring the tensions between embodied subjectivity and the body as spectacle. Her work explores themes of narcissism, voyeurism and exhibitionism; as well as reflecting on the performance of daily life, and how we perform our identities and social relationships.
Supported by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
www.madeleinevirginiabrown.co.uk
SOL'SAX [NYC]
The Call Jah Sol=Jah Sol'Sax is A Free King, A Merry King of Kings County. In 1969 he was born to become Good God Almighty, Burning Bush Man of Bushwick. He was Tri-State educated in The Old School ways. He always matriculated with honors and earned The title: The All See Street Dreaded IllumiNatty, Yale's Lock Jaw Warlock. Sol'Sax also holds Degrees from several Schools Of Hard Knocks including Bellevue and Rikers.
Sol'Sax has been seen breakdancing on MTV in 1984 and was a Party Crasher on The Cosby Show in 1987. In 1989 Sol'Sax studied Zen stone carving in Berlin. On the first day Sol'Sax visited East Berlin, The Berlin Wall Fell.
In 1991 Sol'Sax was initiated into The Mysteries of Traditional African Culture and has made art work that celebrates African Traditional Culture and it's African American retentions till now. His work has been shown at well known venues and collected internationally. Danny Simmons of Rush Arts has said that Sol'Sax is the Greatest Artist of his Generation.
JANA ASTINOV [NYC] Collective Scream - a collective scream for Women
Jana Astanov is a multidisciplinary artist, living in New York. Born in Poland she studied anthropology, philosophy and linguistics in France, and arts in the UK. Her work includes photography, poetry, performance, new media and installation. She performed since 2003 influenced by the 59Rue de Rivoli community in Paris. Her poetry was first published in Polish when she was 16. Since her 20s she experimented with writing in English, with first poetry in her third language (after Polish and French) published at 3AM Magazine in 2015. Jana merges poetry with performance practice and sound art. She has started two feminist performance groups Red Temple (also a publishing house) and W.I.S.E. encouraging other women to create and write their own stories that she often includes in her performances with an aim to portray the female world. She published three collections of poetry: Antidivine (Undergroundbooks.org), Grimoire (Red Temple Press) and Sublunar (Red Temple Press).
www.janaastanov.com
LEAH ARON [NYC] Soap Dance
I create performances that expose the trauma and power of being female. My work conjures forces of attraction and repulsion while I manipulate my body using movement, stillness, repetition and duration. Disorienting and at times alienating, these performances push boundaries of comfort—both of the viewers’ and my own—to achieve altered states of consciousness, exploring the polarity of embodied experience from exhaustion to exhilaration, pain to pleasure.
By placing myself in precarious positions and presenting imagery that foregrounds the darkest aspects of female reality, my work moves between visceral and cerebral modes of femininity and questions relationships between subject and object, artist and spectator. By enlisting viewers to witness performances where I test my anatomical and mental ability, I challenge them to explore their own complicity in various forms of female subjugation. The results are often raw, provocative, and unexpected.
Inspired by Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryadarmo’s “Exergie- Butter Dance,”
ABOUT GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE
182 AVENUE C NEW YORK, NY 10009
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GRACE:
Grace, n. - simple elegance or refinement of movement
Grace Period - an extended period granted as a special favor
The Three Graces (Greek Mythology) - charm, grace, and beauty
Opened in 2006, Grace Exhibition Space is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging works by the current generation of international performance artists whether emerging, mid-career or established. Our events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the boundary between artist and viewer. This is how performance art is meant to be experienced and our mission is the glorification of performance art.
Grace Exhibition Space presents over 30 curated live performance art exhibitions each year, showcasing new work by more than 400 performance artists from across the United States and the world since 2006.
Grace Exhibition Space for International Performance Art Space IRS tax-exempt 501(c)3 status in 2015.
Grace Exhibition Space follows the We Have a Voice Collectives Code of Conduct to Promote Safe(r) Workplaces in the Performing Arts For more information and resources, visit: www.wehavevoice.org