"My work is about movement and style and thoughtlessness. My source material is usually found in isolation, advertisements, homelessness, cold white rooms... our animal is lost and a fool and in this desperate mad denial to avoid the greatest humiliation we are violently eating our own head. I'm not mad, I'm madness." -Jon Konkol // www.jonkonkol.com

Keren Moscovitch is a New York City-based artist, curator and writer whose work explores intimacy, structures of desire and the intersection between sexuality and spirituality. She regularly collaborates with other artists to dissect the ways in which relationships are built and identity is formed. Marianna Olinger is a Brazilian artist currently based in New York City. Her art work builds narratives and epistemic genealogies via actions, images, sound, text, interactions and objects. Memory and identity have been recurrent themes of her work, which has been shown both in New York City and Rio de Janeiro. // kerenmoscovitch.com // mariannaolinger.com

Mette Loulou von Kohl was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a performer and a wanderer. Currently based in New York City, Mette Loulou is a mixed-race queer femme, born to a Lebanese/Palestinian mother and Danish father. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco and Denmark. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate and better understand her present. Mette Loulou weaves movement, words, and her love for the unexpected into the exploration of her embodied histories. She exists in two places at once. // metteloulouvonkohl.com

SADAF NAVA

SADAF is an Iranian born, New York City-based performance artist and musician with deep roots in the NYC and Montreal DIY/noise scenes. SADAF's visuals, sonics, and confrontational performative tactics confound and upend the inward-looking affect inherent to contemporary performance art, simultaneously drawing from and subverting the language of advertising, celebrity, and the gaze. Sadaf and has presented work at 47 Canal, Performa, Issue Project Room, Grace Exhibition Space; Museum of Fine Arts Montreal, Canadian Center for Architecture; Nexus Cultural Center, Beijing. Her work has been featured in ID magazine, FADER, Editorial Magazine, Mask Magazine, and the Guardian UK.

Sadaf's multidisciplinary work focuses on the body, its extensions, resistance and confinement, vocal improvisation and the construction and deconstruction of femininity. Through an exploration of autobiography and narrative, often complicated by references to cultural stereotypes and classical symbolism, Sadaf's work explores themes of female and Middle Eastern identities, the use of makeup and prosthetics, dissonant sound practices, and the formalized body. She often experiments with plasticity and parasitical metamorphosis, bound movement and transformative forms through the use of video, sound, painting, photography and performance. Similarly, Sadaf's musical production methods waver relentlessly between layered methodical constructions and radical free improvisations. // www.sadafhnava.com

Édgar Javier Ulloa [Juárez/USA]

Édgar J. Ulloa is a transdisciplinary artist and post-transborder poet from Ciudad Juárez, México. He maintains a blog (mijuaritos.wordpress.com) of aural, visual, virtual and performance poetry, that serves as a border trauma and memory reflection of his native city when it became the most dangerous in the world. In his work, he emerges as an explorer, producer of the aesthetic-historical, word-sign, word-symbol. He feels compelled to speak out through poetic performance action. His performances negotiate imperialist border politics, cultural memory, trauma and violence in addition to instigating audience and public participation. Ulloa earned his undergraduate degree in Language and Literature in Texas, and his master’s degree in Creative Writing in New York City. He has performed in public spaces and for specific audiences in México City, Colombia, Spain, United States, and Japan.

Élan Jurado (B. 1982 Bryan, TX) is a performance artist based out of New York City. He received a BA in photography from Sam Houston State University, a BFA with a focus in photography and performance art from The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago and an MFA from The School Of Visual Arts. With a foundation in photography and how photo captures the nuances of the human body during movement, Élan’s work eventually stopped being about the capturing of a single moment and became a study of the entire body throughout the coarse of a movement and struggle. Through live performance and video, his work shows the physical and mental struggle to accomplish a task and surpass expectations or to succumb and show how the mind and body become broken. He has performed in various exhibitions, including Gifted and Talented at 3rd Streaming, Frankenstein on the Beach at White Box and La Bienal 2013 at El Museo Del Barrio. Élan’s recent group shows have been at Pristine Galerie in Monterrey, Mexico, and the international art fair Contempo.His videos have been on exhibit at C.A.M. Galleri in Istanbul, the Museo Laboratorio in Città Sant'Angelo, Italy and other galleries within Manhattan. Most recently, his work was included in Select Art Fair’s 2014 Special Projects in Miami. Élan has had press listings within The New York Times, The New Yorker and Art In America, to name a few. Additionally, his work is included in New York University’s Fales Library collection. // www.elanjurado.com

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PRESS
The Sphinx Returns listed as #6 on ARTFORUM's NY Fall Performance Preview by Claudia La Rocco. "What's not to love about that?"

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SPECIAL PROGRAMMING:

+ Social Health Performance Club (September)

+ Panoply Performance Lab presents PERFORMANCY FORUM's 5th Anniversary (October)

+ Sherman Fleming, Exhibition, Performance and Art Talk. (December)

The Sphinx Returns SEASON ARTISTS

Thomas Albrecht [NY], Lion Ayodele+++ [NYC], The Illustrious Blacks [NYC], John Bonafede [NYC], Andrew Braddock, David Ian Griess & Elizabeth Lamb [NYC], Hector Canonge [NYC], Jeannette Ehlers [Denmark], Sherman Fleming [DC], Annabel Gueredrat & Henri Tauliaut [Martinique], Ryan Hawk [MA/TX], Elan Jurado [NYC], Jon Konkol [NYC], Benjamin Lundberg [USA/Colombia], Tsedaye Makonnen [DC], Zave Martohardjono [NYC/Indonesia/Canada], Butch Merigoni [NY], Keren Moscovitch & Marianna Olinger [NYC], Sadaf Nava [NY], Vela Phelan [Boston, MA], Julia Santoli [NYC], Kledia Spiro [MA], Jeremy Toussaint Baptiste [NYC], Edgar Javier Ulloa [Juárez/USA], Ultras [NYC], Mette Loulou von Kohl [Palestine/USA], Ni’Ja Whitson [NYC], André Zachery & Lamont Hamilton [NYC & Chicago, IL]

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