Performance artist Gabrielle Civil will perform her latest work, “The Déjà Vu,” during an upcoming visit to the University of Kansas.
Civil is a Black feminist performance artist, poet and writer originally from Detroit who has premiered 50 performance artworks around the world, according to a news release from KU. Her performance memoirs include “The Déjà Vu,” “Swallow the Fish,” “Experiments in Joy,” “( ghost gestures )” and “In and Out of Place,” according to the release.
“Through her work, Civil says, her ‘aim is to open up space,'” according to the release. “Among her praxes are embodied remembering.”
Civil’s performance is set for 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13 in the Forum at Marvin Hall. It is free and open to the public.
During her visit, Civil will also host a student writing workshop in conjunction with a course taught by Megan Kaminski, poet, essayist and associate professor of English.
“Gabrielle Civil’s poetry, performance and scholarship open up space for dreaming liberatory futures, re-visioning the past and seeing ourselves anew,” Kaminski said in the release. “In sharing her practices as a socially engaged artist and scholar, her workshop will help students to see the potency in their own writing to inspire and guide us collectively towards understanding our present moment and towards creating the worlds that we long for.”
Civil currently teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. Her art writing has appeared in The Third Rail, Art21, Small Axe and Obsidian, and her essays and translations have appeared in Something on Paper, Aster(ix) and Two Lines, according to the release.
“Emerging from the intersection of pandemic and uprising, her most recent book, ‘The Déjà Vu,’ activates forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech and lyric essay into performance memoir,” according to the release.
Here’s the full flyer for the event:
In addition to the Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture fund, Civil’s visit is supported by The Commons; the KU departments of English, African & African-American Studies, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Visual Art; the History of Black Writing (HBW); the Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; the School of Architecture & Design and the J. Wayne & Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, according to the release.
Learn more about Civil ahead of her visit on her website, gabriellecivilartist.com.
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