Boy mother / faceless bloom by Juni One Set

photos by Wolf Daniel courtesy of Roulette Intermedium

2022 Colorado College and Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center

2023 New York Live Arts

2024 SEATTLE PERFORMANCE TO BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY (Dec)

Dia Art Foundation and New York Live Arts present the New York premiere of Boy mother / faceless bloom, a stage work by Juni One Set, a collaboration of Senga Nengudi, eddy kwon, and Haruko Crow Nishimura & Joshua Kohl of Degenerate Art Ensemble. The work is presented in conjunction with the long-term exhibition of Nengudi’s work on view at Dia Beacon, as part of Performa Biennial 2023 .

Threading mythology and autobiography, while drawing from the diverse lineages of queer, anti-colonial, and care-based artistic practices, Boy mother / faceless bloom is an interdisciplinary performance work. Dance, music, poetry, ritual, and sculptural installation converge to tell a story of transformation, transgression, and the formation of new trancestral lines.

Senga Nengudi: co-creator, sculptural & costume design, movement

Eddy Kwon: co-creator, music, movement
Crow Nishimura: co-creator, movement, music
Joshua Kohl: co-creator, music

video by Leo Mayberry & Ian Lucero

lighting design by Jessica Trundy

Costume by Senga Nengudi and Willow Fox

From the group’s statement: “Our work is intensely collaborative, rooted in the deepest respect and love we hold for one another. Through an intentional, transformational process, we build a world within which we can be free. Our bodies live in fear, in the shadows of beginning-less violence, in joy and in care. Through ritual and embodiment, we find openings for healing and growth and invite others to arrive. We are trying to tell a story we never want to end.”

PREVIEW VIDEO FOR NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

Senga Nengudi’s (she/her) media-spanning oeuvre draws on a range of influences including free jazz and spoken word, Yoruba mythology, Japanese art and theater, Brazilian Constructivism, and African ritual. Characterized by experimentation with process, material, and form, Nengudi’s work challenges and reimagines the traditional narratives of Post-Minimalism and Conceptual Art, while reframing the broader histories of both feminism and the Black Power Movement. Nengudi has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2019); Henry Moore Institute (2018); the Baltimore Museum of Art (2018); Art + Practice, Los Angeles (2018); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2017); and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (2017). She has also been featured in significant group exhibitions, including Soul of a Nation (2017); Viva Arte Viva, the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 (2017); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012); Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980(2011); WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007); and the 54th Carnegie International (2007). www.sengasenga.com

eddy kwon (she/her) is a violinist, vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer ancestral lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres & inflections, textures & movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music/Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Holland Andrews, Tomeka Reid, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. As a violinist, violist, and/or vocalist, she has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, and others. She has performed throughout the Americas and Europe, including the Kennedy Center, Big Ears Festival, Kaufman Center, Roulette Intermedium, SESC Pompeia, Barbican Centre, Jazzfest Berlin, Festival Sons d’hivers, Festival Banlieues Bleues, and more. Commissions include Bang On A Can, Roulette Intermedium, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, National Performance Network, and Colorado College Creativity & Innovation.

HARUKO CROW NISHIMURA is a dancer, vocalist and co-director of Degenerate Art Ensemble (DAE). She is always searching to discover how art can create deeper connections and awakenings. Her unique style of movement is inspired by her practices of physical theater and butoh dance. She excavates the dark corners of humanity, inventing new mythologies and reimagining fairy tales, telling stories that strive to reveal hidden beauty, confront demons, and ultimately find healing. She is a recipient of Arts Innovators Award from Artist Trust, a Creative Capital award, is a Guggenheim fellow, received a commission with her group DAE from director Robert Wilson to re-interpret his work Einstein on the Beach ( NY ), created a solo dance for legendary dancer Anna Halprin’s 95 Rituals ( SF ), and a large scale site specific collaboration with Olson Kundig Architects ( Seattle ). She has performed her dance work throughout North America and Europe. Her newest work Skeleton Flower premiered at the SPOTLIGHT USA dance festival in Bulgaria presented by American Dance Abroad and appeared in the 2021 International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Mexico City. Skeleton Flower will be shown in New York and Denmark in 2022.

JOSHUA KOHL is a composer and sound designer and co-directs Degenerate Art Ensemble. His approach to music is dedicated to the exploration and proliferation of genre-free music that utilizes all of the available tools of music-making, from classical instruments to electronics and new inventions - with a goal of reaching the hearts and souls of the listener through vibrational resonance. He was the recipient of Creative Capital, Artist Trust Innovators, MAP Fund, NEA and Music Theatre Now awards. His work for string quartet and choir was performed by the Kronos Quartet at their 40th anniversary concert in Seattle and at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. In addition to his work with Degenerate Art Ensemble he is also a passionate conductor of the music of his peers including a Lincoln center concert of the work of composer Jherek Bischoff with singer David Byrne. He is deeply honored to work with this exceptional team of collaborators.

Boy mother / faceless bloom is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Colorado College in partnership with Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information, visit www.npnweb.org.

This project is supported by the National Performance Network (NPN) Documentation & Storytelling Initiative. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

Boy mother / faceless bloom was made with financial and residency support from BASE Experimental Arts (Seattle) and Roulette Intermedium (Brooklyn).
The project is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a residency at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.

The project has also been supported by a residency from BASE Experimental Arts in Seattle.

The work will had its premiere February 2022 at Colorado College.