Okwui Okpokwasili

Okwui Okpokwasili (/ˈoʊkwi oʊkˈpoʊkwəsɪli/;[1] born August 6, 1972) is an Igbo-Nigerian American artist, performer, choreographer, and writer. Her multidisciplinary performances draw upon her training in theatre, and she describes her work as at "the intersection of theatre, dance, and the installation." Several of her works relate to historical events in Nigeria. She is especially interested in subjects of cultural and historical memory and how the Western imagination perceives of African bodies.

Early life

The daughter of Igbo Nigerians who came to the United States to escape the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s, Okpokwasili grew up in the Bronx, New York.[2][3] She attended Yale University, where she met filmmaker Andrew Rossi, who made a documentary about her piece Bronx Gothic.[4]

Career

Okpokwasili has risen to become a key figure in the New York experimental dance scene. In addition to several one-woman performances, including those highlighted below, she is known for her frequent collaborations with Ralph Lemon and Peter Born, her husband. Born often designs the lighting, staging, and directs Okpokwasili's performances.[2]

She is also known for her role in the music video for JAY-Z's album 4:44 created by TNEG, a production company founded by Arthur Jafa.[5]

In April 2017, she performed at Mass MOCA, responding to Nick Cave's massive installation work Until with a site-specific dance. The performance was co-sponsored by Jacob's Pillow Dance;, the acclaimed choreographer Bill T. Jones performed earlier in the series of artists responding to Cave's installation.[6]

In a theatrical role, Okpokwasili performed in Julie Taymor's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.[7]

Selected works

Pent Up: A Revenge Dance

This was her first collaborative piece with her husband, Peter Born. She won a 2010 New York Dance Award and a 2009 Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Production. Centering on a mother and daughter, the work considered cultural and generational clashes.

Bronx Gothic

In this 90-minute one-woman semi-autobiographical performance which she also choreographed, Okpokwasili plays two young black girls talking about growing up, feeling vulnerable, and discovering sexuality. As the audience enters, she is already on the stage and is trembling in a dark slip. Eventually she begins to speak the dialogue of the two girls in conversation.[2]

The work is the subject of a documentary by Andrew Rossi that shares the title of the performance work.[4] The film illuminates some of the process of creating the work, includes clips of Okpokwasili answering questions from the audience when she toured the piece, and candid discussions with her husband about race, and features her parents and their reaction to her art.[8] Cultural critic Hilton Als praised this piece in a 2017 review of Poor People's TV Room.[3] The piece was commissioned by Danspace Project and Performance Space 122 in 2014.[9]

when I return who will receive me

A group performance involving seven female performers singing, speaking, and dancing, this work was staged in the underground magazine of Fort Jay at Governors Island in July 2016 as part of The River to River Festival.[10] This performance included fragments of research on Nigerian history as it relates to women's bodies that were used to develop Poor People's TV Room.[2] During the two-hour duration of the performance, the audience was permitted to move through the space of the military cavern, while the performers moved throughout the installation spaces.[10] The work was commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Poor People's TV Room

This work considers the subject of women's resistance movements in Nigeria, specifically the Women's War in 1929, when the country was under British rule, and the kidnapping of 300 schoolgirls in 2014 by Boko Haram.[2] As part of this project, Okpokwasili also researched the film industry in Nigeria, known as Nollywood, considering representations of women in a cinema where African and Western cultures intersect.[11]

In an interview with Jenn Joy for Bomb magazine, Okpokwasili stated that the piece "is about a critical absence that I feel when a tragedy happens—like the kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram and the Women's War in Nigeria. My work is not explicitly about the incredible women in northern Nigeria who came together to shame their government into doing something to get these 300 abducted girls back. African women are not just victims of colonizers and oppressive or corrupt governments. They have been building collectives and advocating and fighting to be visible for a long time. I don’t want to make documentary work—but I don’t want these women to disappear, either. My piece is about visibility."[2]

She has cited as a major influence the Nigerian novelist Amos Tutuola, who is known for incorporating elements of Yoruba folklore into his works.[11]

The research Okpokwasili completed for Poor People's TV Room also informed Sitting on a Man’s Head, a work the artist presented at the 2018 Berlin Biennale.[12]

Awards and honors

Okpokwasili has been awarded several Bessie Awards for her performances, including performances of works she has written and developed herself. In 2018 she was named a MacArthur Fellow, a highly prestigious "Genius Award" that allows recipients the freedom to further develop their talent.

Residencies
  • 2013: New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography
  • 2013: Visiting Artist at Rhode Island School of Design with Ralph Lemon[2]
  • 2014–15: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Extended Life Program
  • 2016: Creative Capital Grant
  • 2015–17: Randjelovic/Stryker Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts

References
  1. "Choreographer and Performer Okwui Okpokwasili | 2018 MacArthur Fellow". MacArthur Foundation. October 4, 2018. Retrieved December 29, 2018.
  2. "Okwui Okpokwasili by Jenn Joy" (interview), Bomb Magazne, September 15, 2016.
  3. Hilton Als, "Okwui Okpokwasili Explores Politics and the Body", The New Yorker, April 24, 2017.
  4. Tori Latham, "The Intimate World of the Performance Artist",The Atlantic, September 24, 2017.
  5. Sameer Rao, "4 Questions for 'Bronx Gothic' Creator and Star Okwui Okpokwaili", Color Lines, July 11, 2017.
  6. "Mass MoCA installation embraces new solo dance work", The Berkshire Eagle, April 5, 2017.
  7. Jenna Scherer, Coil Festival: An Interview with Writer-Performer Okwui Okpokwasili, Time Out New York, January 6, 2013.
  8. Glenn Kenny, Review: Okwui Okpokwasili's 'Bronx Gothic' From Stage to Screen, The New York Times, July 11, 2017.
  9. "Okwui Okpokwasili's Bronx Gothic: a new documentary at Film Forum", Danspace project, July 7, 2017.
  10. Christina Knight, "Okwui Okpokwasili: A Q&A on Research and Performance", Thirteen.
  11. Ivan Talijancic, "Divining the Shadows: Okwui Okpokwasili's Poor People's TV Room", The Brooklyn Rail, April 1, 2017.
  12. "Okwui Okpokwasili Dips into the Past to Bear Down on the Present". Cultured Magazine. March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 17, 2019.
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