MoMA: 1st Kravis Studio Artist in Residence – Okwui Okpokwasili

The Museum of Modern Art is proud to announce that The Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer, and writer Okwui Okpokwasili is the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio’s first artist-in-residence. Using the Kravis Studio as a space for developing her piece behind closed doors, there will be rehearsals open to the public to view and attend on August 23rd, 25th, and 26th at 3 PM.

Through three public events, the audience will have the opportunity to experience the evolution of Okpokwasili’s new piece. On August 26th, the final open rehearsal will be followed by an in-person conversation between Okwui Okpokwasili, Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, and Simone Leigh.

Okpokwasili explores the roles of African and African American women by creating multidisciplinary performance pieces that seek to shape the shared space inhabited by the audience and performer. In this residency Okpokwasili will be developing a story, written by the artist herself, that unfolds across space and time, beginning with a fictitious event in a precolonial Nigeria of her imagination and focusing on one family’s violent entanglement in the transatlantic slave trade. Together with a group of collaborators, Okpokwasili will use the residency as a space for developing the piece through movement, sound, spoken texts, and “folk” songs.