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This series of events is intended specifically for women and gender non-binary individuals, by request of the artists.
The second in a special series of gatherings curated by Writer in Residence Sophia Al-Maria, we explore an eclectic array of subjects. From the history of the squash flower blossom to the cosmic music of Alice Coltrane, from extra-terrestrial mating rituals to the outer limits of human birth control methods. This is an intimate evening featuring film, music, a special performance by artist Victoria Sin and poetry reading by Treasure Shields Redmond.
The event draws on new writing composed by Al-Maria, a series of mini mega-narratives that span politics, science fiction and personal experience.
Residency supported by the Barjeel Art Foundation
Sophia Al-Maria (b. 1983, lives and works in London) studied comparative literature at the American university in Cairo, and aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her first solo exhibition Virgin with a Memory was presented at HOME, Manchester in 2014. Al-Maria has also shown at the Whitney Museum NY, USA (2016); New Museum, NY (2015); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2013); Waqif Art Centre, Doha Qatar (2007) and townhouse Gallery Cairo (2005). Al Maria participated in the 2016 Biennale of moving images (BIM), organized by the centre d’art contemporain in Geneva. In 2015 she guest edited issue 8 of The Happy hypocrite (Fresh Hell). Her memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth (2012), was published by Harper Perennial. Her writing has also appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Triple Canopy and Bidoun.
Victoria Sin is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. This includes Drag as a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking.
Drawing from close personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives on the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body. Their long-term project Dream Babes explores science and speculative fiction as a productive strategy of queer resistance, imaging futurity that does not depend on existing historical and social infrastructure. It has included science fiction porn screenings and talks, a three-day programme of performance at Auto Italia South East, a publication, and a regular science fiction reading group for queer people of colour.
A Mississippi native, Treasure Shields Redmond is a published poet, master educator, community arts organizer, and successful entrepreneur. Treasure was raised in the federal housing projects, and went on to be signed to M.C. Hammer’s label as a hip hop artist, and writer. She is the author of chop: a collection of kwansabas for fannie lou hamer (2015). Her doctoral research focuses on the recorded performances of foundational Black Women poets, and the ways they deployed sound to impact the canon and justice movements. Treasure centers collaboration in her personal arts practice and as an organizing principle. As such, she has co-founded a funding collective for Black artists called The Black Skillet, and a podcast that centers voices of color called Who Raised You? Treasure is the founder of Feminine Pronoun Consultants, LLC, and Get The Acceptance Letter Academy.
