Grieving Landscapes is a durational performance installation that explores the transformative power of grief through an investigation of grief practices and rituals. We honor that we grieve more than just the death of our loved ones. We also mourn relationships, life changes and transitions, social injustice, and the destruction of our environment. We acknowledge that grief practices are culturally specific and that not all people are granted equal access to the right to mourn publicly.
In the space of the installation, we create and hold space for the complicated webs of pain, joy, catharsis, and the honoring or troubling of ancestors that grief entails.
In her 2021 essay, “Grief belongs in social movements. Can we embrace it?” Malkia Devich-Cyril writes, “What loss hates most is to be ignored.” In turning our eyes toward loss in its multiple manifestations, we make space for grief to transform the world as we know it into the world in which we want to live. In this landscape, audience members and performers will co-create speculative responses to the question: What and how are you grieving?
Featuring works by Isa Bowser, Jackie Courchene Spayd, Lucy Dillon, Alisha Jihn, Nicole Lawson, and Kierra Williams.
Performances will be held on May 18, 19, and 20 at 6:00 PM, with an artist talk-back immediately following.
Content Warning: Discussions of racism, suicide, and gender-based violence
