What does it mean to be American? American in the sense of what it is to be living, working, and creating in the Americas: a broad and fluid definition of this hemispheric region and the people who identify with it—people of first nations, South/Central/North America, Canada, the Caribbean. The Great American Performance Art Festival is a series of performance art events curated around this question and its implications, most specifically the notion of borders and barriers. Borders are an arbitrary social construct reminiscent of colonization, war, and exploitation. The population of the Americas has grappled with issues regarding borders and migration, and barriers such as those between languages, political ideologies, religious beliefs, identities, races, ethnicities, demographics, privileges, communities, individuals, governing and law enforcement bodies, and countless other tensions that arise as a part of living in, working in, and identifying with the Americas.

Grace Exhibition Space Brooklyn and this horizontally organized group of curators and artists invited erformance art pieces that respond to the problematics of borders and barriers within the Americas. We seeked proposals for embodied art that reinterpret and reimagine the diverse social, cultural, and economic landscape of the Americas. We encourage proposals for pieces that extend to include broad cross-sections of communities and demographics, and especially those which include participatory elements that address the natural performative barrier between artist and audience. The Great American Performance Art Festival welcomes any interpretation, however abstract, of its proposed theme.

The Great American Performance Art Festival will take place from March-August 2015. Events will be held every other weekend at Grace Exhibition Space for March-May, and every other weekend at the Grace Performance Art Farm in Rosendale, NY from June-August. We will curate roughly 4-5 artists per event.

MANUEL VASON

I see my practice as a constant battle against the impossibility of reaching ‘presence’. For years I have been trying hard to bridge photography and performance, and everyday I live the illusion of having fulfilled my ambition. In the core of my practice lies an exchange; between myself and another artist, between the work and the viewer. I see myself reflected in all the artists I have met, collaborated and fallen in love with…Can art be a relationship? Working with different minds and bodies allows me to discover every day something new about my own mind and body. I’ve always wanted to be a sculptor although I’ve been using photography as my main medium. Surface is my material. Surface is my biggest enemy. Maybe curiosity is eating me up inside, but so far it tastes pretty good.

Maria Fernanda Hubeaut is a performance artist, photographer and educator whose works have been shown nationally and internationally: New York, Boston, France, Czech Republic and Argentina. Her practice is based on visual arts, documentary and journalistic photography, and performance art. In addition to her individual practice, she has participated in collaborative projects. In her work and teachings, she is connected and has a deep humanist commitment as someone who studied and practices Eastern philosophies, using her training in Sufi and Butoh dances. Selected works have been presented in Performeando, Queens Museum, Museum Fueguino of Art, Museum of fine art Octavio de la Colina (Argentina.) Grace Exhibition Space, Panoply Performance Lab (PPL), Bushwick Open Studios (BOS), The Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA), The IMC Lab + Gallery, Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, English Kills Art Gallery, to name a few. She lives and works in New York City.

Coralee Lynn Rose makes Live Art. She creates Live occurrences and she creates a Live experience for the observer. She combines installation, conceptual, and, performance art into one interactive piece. Coralee also explores the Zen notion of space. Utilizing meditation and endurance to evoke the question of "what is real" response within the observers through durational performance. Usually her face, and or head is covered to remove her identity. This is the essence of her Live Art. Coralee is objectifying herself, becoming a representation of the female body, creating a visual image that reflects any female body, not just the artist herself.

Coralee's performance for Grace Exhibition Space is a continuation of her series; "Chocolate …Will Set Her Free…" This series first appeared at Local Project (Long Island City), No Longer Empty (Long Island City), The Detroit Dirty Show, The Seattle Erotic Art Festival, NudeNite Tampa, NudeNite Orlando, and ActArt in London. Coralee has performed in traditional and non- traditional gallery spaces. She's featured in the publication, The Worlds Greatest Erotic Art of Today; volume 4. She's received her BFA from the College of Saint Rose, Albany NY, and her MFA from Hunter College, NY.

My current interdisciplinary practice involves performance and an exploration of the body through sculpture, installation, mark making, and video. In my work, I evoke iconic characters from history (such as Zora Neale Hurston), popular culture (such as Blaxploitation figures), and my own biography (the stories of my grandmothers) in a way that challenges preconceived notions of black female identity. Like other contemporary work that are based in history — such as Kara Walker’s African/American (1998) and Ellen Driscoll’s The Loophole of Retreat (1992) — my work demonstrates the significance of narrating our own stories and asserting the ways that we want to be represented. My art also draws inspiration from traditional African art practices, where wearable sculpture intersects with theater and storytelling.

Marita Isobel Solberg is a musician, a visual artist and poet. A nomad of the world. A multifaced crossover artist, she experiments and engages many different media in her work such as spoken words, sound/music, performance art, photography, video, clay/ceramics and sculpture. Interweaving elements from Sámi, Northern and Japanese Culture and subculture she embodies personas or characters of varied but particular properties; The seer, the witch, the sage or the jester. Equally understated and burlesque, minimal and expressive, sarcastic and blissful, blunt and evasive, the works explore a world of challenge and strangeness, violence and melancholy, loneliness and desire with narrative passages or content. At times autobiographical, she mixes with more symbolic and ritual elements. Her nomadic practice has taken in a wide range of residencies and professional performances around the world, from Arkhangelsk in Russia to Sicily, Venice and New York, including the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan, 2007; The Watermill Center in New York (Robert Wilson), 2008 and The Performance Centre, London (David Thorp), 2013.

Matthew began seeking alternative educational environments for himself after completing three semesters at a public university. He received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Naropa University in Boulder, CO, and then worked as a mover of pianos and other incredibly heavy objects before discovering another unique educational environment at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM, where he received an MA in Eastern Classics. From there, he moved to Mississippi to teach middle school and attend the University of Mississippi, earning an MA in Curriculum and Instruction. Matthew came to HVSS by way of a search for a place in which he is permitted to respect children and teenagers as equals. He enjoys reading, gardening, music, drawing, learning just about anything, and most of all playing with his friends, wife, and beautiful daughter. 

ABOUT GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE

Grace Exhibition Space opened in 2006 and is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging performance works by the current generation of international performance artists, whether emerging, mid career or established. Being a Brooklyn loft, our events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the boundary between artist and viewer. Grace Exhibition Space is run by Jill & Erik with Vincent Tiley. Jamie is our bartender and Leah runs the door.

Please also support PANOPLY PERFORMANCE LAB [Brooklyn] GLASSHOUSE GALLERY [Brooklyn], MOBIUS [Boston] DFBRL8R GALLERY [Chicago] and EAMES ARMSTRONG [Washington, DC] - when you want to see more Performance Art!

"I have found Grace Space to be a breath of fresh air, and a new way to see and experience feelings you may have not faced in a long time. It’s a place to let yourself be exposed, amused, delighted, and terrified all at the same time, and I can say I haven’t experienced this combination of emotions at any gallery or theater I have ever stepped into, and that’s a wonderful thing. The space provides a refreshing perspective on an art scene that has been somewhat shackled and restrained for quite a bit of time now. Grace Exhibition Space is a brave pioneer as it puts Bushwick, as well as New York City, on the forefront of exploration and exposure into the minds and bodies of artists who are truly gifted, fearless, and unique." Terri Ciccone. Bushwick Daily January, 2013 "On each night, and in each performance, the human body is redeemed from the mundane and made anew."

David Lagaccia, Williamsburg Greenpoint News+Art (June, 2012)

Read Article