“Dance Trans* Revolution” Exhibition

apexart

[Image: Dion McKenzie "Meet Us On The Dance Floor Before The World Ends" (2021)]

This event has ended.

Curated by After Party Collective (Vidisha-Fadescha & Shaunak Mahbubani)

Featuring Work By:
7thGrl a.k.a. Liniya,
Grace Banu,
Jonathan Eden,
Habibitch,
Jasmine Infiniti,
LoMaasBello & Will Fredo,
Dion McKenzie,
Bhenji Ra

“We must fight to be seen, as we see, through the fences into the play yards we are kept out of,” says Dion McKenzie a.k.a. TYGAPAW (NYC) in their operatic techno EP Ode to Black Trans Lives. From the gharanas of New Delhi to the Balls of New York, these sites of collectivity have long been a space to subvert colonial power and reposition agency within trans* bodies. This exhibition celebrates the spatialities, rhythms and choreographies that compose the resilient force of trans* led community gathering, offering not only safety, but also affirmation and care.

Will Fredo (Berlin) & LoMaasBello (Bogota) locate the history of the black/trans* party as a “liberatory situation,” alongside Jasmine Infiniti (NYC), founder of label New World Dysorder, who melds the heritage of Detroit techno with ballroom sounds. Habibitch (Paris) presents a video translation of their lauded lecture-performance Decolonize the Dancefloor, while 7thGrl a.k.a. Liniya (Boston) vogues her way into digital representation via Second Life. Bhenji Ra (Sydney) and Grace Banu (Chennai) each present archival glimpses from their communities; Bhenji documenting intimacy and indomitability within her family House of Slé, and Grace narrating the journey of organizing structures of self-sufficiency and dignity in the form of a co-operative colony for trans-women in Tamil Nadu, India. Each work reclaims the legacies of the Global South to manifest a future of collective trans* agency. Jonathan Eden (Seattle) takes us furthest, to the Interstellar realm of 2121, illustrating the ability-accessible after party we can’t wait to upload our selves into.

DANCE TRANS* REVOLUTION is an apexart NYC Open Call exhibition.

After Party Collective (New Delhi), formed by artist-curator duo Vidisha-Fadescha and Shaunak Mahbubani in 2019, acts in intersections between curatorial and performance practices, energizing choreographies of community, agency, legality, and pleasure. Expanding the Party as a site for critical praxis they produce spaces of embodied thinking directed towards the affirmation of trans*, intersex, and other gender-deviant bodies, Vidisha-Fadescha hosts Party Office, a trans*feminist anti-caste anti-racist art & social space, exhibiting at documenta 15. Shaunak Mahbubani is the curator of exhibition series ‘Allies for the Uncertain Futures’, previously selected as part of the apexart International Open Call 2018, and was recently a resident at ISCP NY (April - June 2021).