Unpacking: A New Performance by Clifford Owens
December 13th, 7:00 PM
Photography or video not allowed
Clifford Owens is a New York City-based artist. His work has been presented internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. Clifford Owens’ art has appeared in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His solo exhibitions include “Anthology: Clifford Owens” Museum of Modern Art PS1 (2011-2012), “Better the Rebel You Know” Home, Manchester, England (2014), and “Perspectives 173: Clifford Owens” Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2011). His many group exhibitions include, “Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art” Contemporary Arts Museum (2012 - 2014), “Greater New York 2005” Museum of Modern Art PS1 (2005), “Freestyle” The Studio Museum in Harlem (2001), and “Performance Now” (2013 – 2014), and “Lone Wolf Recital Corp” Museum of Modern Art (2017).
His interdisciplinary performance projects include, “Photographs with an Audience” (ongoing since 2008), “Seminar,” at Pioneer Works and Denniston Hill, “A Forum for Performance Art” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and “A Salon for Performance Art” at Artpace.
He studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rutgers University, and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He has received numerous grants and fellowships including the William H. Johnson Prize, the Art Matters Grant, the Louis Tiffany Comfort Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the New York Community Trust, the Lambent Foundation, Denniston Hill Distinguished Performance Artist Prize, and the Rutgers University Ralph Bunche Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. Publications, reviews, and interviews about his work include New York Times, Art +Auction, Village Voice, Modern Painters, Art in America, Art Forum, The New Yorker, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, The Drama Review, Greater New York 2005, Performa: New Visual Art Performance, Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education, and Why Art Photography? He has written for exhibition catalogues, the New York Times, Art Forum, and Performing Arts Journal. His project “Anthology” is the subject of his first book.
Clifford lives and works in New York City.
About Denniston Hill
Situated in the Southern Catskills on a 200-acre campus, Denniston Hill (DH) was established on the conviction that it is imperative for artists of all disciplines, backgrounds and career stages to have time and space for reflection and research. The organization was founded in 2004 by a group of primarily LGBTQ artists, architects, and writers of color. We are an artist-centered interdisciplinary arts organization that fosters an inclusive, practical discourse about the aesthetics, function, ethics and meaning of contemporary artistic practice. Our mission is guided by the principle that creative and critical voices are important in shaping a just, equitable society.
About Triangle Arts Association
Triangle is an artist-founded non-profit art institution in New York City, working locally and globally since 1982. Our programs emphasize research, dialogue and experimentation through residencies and public programs.
About the Thematic Program, Exodus
While the narration of the Exodus often calls to mind the utopic moment of fulfillment upon reaching the Promised Land, the real protagonists of the story are the first generation of ex-slaves who made the imaginative leap to reject bondage and then spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. The Exodus story finds new resonance today in a world defined by homelessness, both literal and existential, on an epic scale. Every day we witness scenes of mass dispossession as millions around the globe flee war, natural calamity, ethnic cleansing, and economic hardship. In the current moment of sensory overload we are reminded that the Exodus was never simply a geographic journey, it was always ontological – a journey to liberate human consciousness – and this has been ongoing for millennia. For the next four years, Denniston Hill dedicates its program to the Exodus and the exit from the fantasy of security into the reality of the mirage. In particular, DH seeks to investigate the legacy of slavery and the politics of race and gender in relation to the current wave of cognitive confusion. At stake is a full appreciation of the agency of the enslaved as an aesthetic and philosophical resource for the journey ahead. Exodus calls on artists, writers, architects, intellectuals, and activists to take advantage of this moment to interweave work, action, and intellect to re-imagine an engaged withdrawal through disobedience, intemperance, the right of resistance, and miracle.
Unpacking is part of Denniston Hill’s Exodus project.