taisha paggett: soliloquy for a horizon
Remai Modern presents a new performance and exhibition by Southern California-based artist, taisha paggett. An interdisciplinary dance artist, paggett’s work contemplates and interrupts fixed histories of Black and queer embodiment, desire, placemaking, possibility and survival. Her practice is rooted in the body with a deep understanding of how the complex social, historical and political implications of her body relate to the production of knowledge.
Event/Exhibition meta autogenerated block.
When
September 7, 2024 – November 3, 2024
Where
Connect Gallery
soliloquy for a horizon is part of paggett’s ongoing examination of Black survival and relational land practices across Turtle Island (US and Canada). paggett’s 2021 project, com.pleats.we (housecoat) responded to Allensworth, the first town in California to be founded, financed, and governed by an Black community, while her 2018 project, i believe in echoes, engaged with the history of Hogan’s Alley to consider the residue of Black displacement in Vancouver. soliloquy for a horizon is paggett’s first project on the Canadian prairies, and draws on the history of the Shiloh People, a community who strategically fled the US to forge Saskatchewan’s first Black settlement in 1910. Developed in collaboration with meital yaniv and Chris Kuhl, this project aims to weave a thread about Black becoming across the prairies, through the life and afterlife of 20th-century dancer and model Maudelle Bass Weston and a palimpsest of burial sites, drowned archives, and the possibilities of landing as resistance.
About the artist
Born and raised in Fresno, California, taisha paggett’s individual and collaborative works re-articulate and collide specific western choreographic practices with the politics of daily life. Recent works include the dance company project, WXPT (we are the paper, we are the trees) and the collaborative School for the Movement of the Technicolo(u)r People, both of which also draw upon inquiries inside of social practice; critical pedagogy; somatic and contemplative investigation; queer, feminist and Black studies; performance and visual art studies; as well as the political and philosophical meshes of personal history.
As a dancer, paggett has performed, toured with and made significant creative contributions to many choreographers, artists and performance projects. Her practice and research have been supported by the MAP Fund, the National Performance Network, and University of California Institute for Research in the Arts and residencies at the Headlands (Sausalito, CA), UBC Okanagan’s Summer Indigenous Studies program; and Basis Voor Actuel Kunst (Utrecht, NL).
paggett’s work has been presented at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia); DiverseWorks (Houston); the Whitney Museum (New York); Studio Museum in Harlem (New York); Danspace at St Mark’s Church (New York); Defibrillator (Chicago); Gallery TPW (Toronto); and the Audain Gallery (Vancouver), amongst other venues. From 2005-13 paggett co-instigated the LA-based dance project and discursive platform, itch. paggett has received several awards including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Merce Cunningham Award in 2019.
