A stream winds through the center of naturalistic indoor environment at Performance Space New York (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Performance Space New York
150 First Ave., fourth floor
Wednesday-Sunday through May 9, free with RSVP, noon – 6:00
performancespacenewyork.org
online slideshow
As the pandemic lockdown in New York City begins to ease up and arts institutions slowly open, Precious Okoyomon has brought the outside inside in the beautifully meditative and welcoming Fragmented Body Perceptions as Higher Vibration Frequencies to God. The installation, in the Keith Haring Theatre on the fourth floor of Performance Space New York, offers a naturalistic ecosystem where one can grieve and reflect on the events of the past year, during which the country has been immersed in overlapping crises, from the coronavirus to police injustice to growing income inequality, all of which disproportionately affects Black men, women, and children. Continuing through May 9, Fragmented Body consists of gravel, small Delaware River rocks, boulders, soil, insects, anoles, and wildflowers, with an algae-laden stream running down the middle and kudzu ash, sourced from Okoyomon’s recent Earthseed exhibit in Germany, falling from the ceiling in a kind of wake, a ritual burning of the invasive Japanese vine that was used to prevent soil erosion in the cotton-growing south and became a metaphor for the suppression of Blacks after slavery ended.
Boulders piled like cairns evoke rituals as well as spirits in immersive exhibition (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“The creation of Earthseed started this ever-flourishing garden of kudzu, which was allowed to evolve and escape and be truly wild,” Okoyomon explains in a statement. “At the end, it had to be killed: It couldn’t be transplanted to a new environment because it’s a monster. And the way I had to burn it all and the way that ash gets to have a new life here, it seemed the only reconcilable wake we could do for it, and one that would reflect the timeline of death we’ve been in. 2020 was the reckoning of death, and we’re still living in it. We have to face it and live in it and allow it to change us and be changed by it.”
Timed, limited fifteen-minute admission is free with advance RSVP; we were fortunate to go on a rainy afternoon and spend more than a half hour by ourselves in the space, sitting by the trickling stream, following the paths laid out on the gravel, and gently touching the hollow boulders, piled like cairns, in order to feel the vibration of the soundtrack, which features such found noises as construction. The haunting sound design is by Dion McKenzie, with lighting by Jørgen Skjaervold.
Precious Okoyomon’s installation offers visitors an opportunity to reflect, grieve, and revive (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The work also features a poem, “Weather report,” by the Brooklyn-based Okoyomon (Ajebota, But Did U Die?) that begins, “Today i wake up still the assemblage associated distortions bewilder me / IN THIS WORLD I AM A SHAPESHIFTER / FRAGMENTED BODY PERCEPTIONS AS HIGHER VIBRATION FREQUENCIES TO GOD / In the supernatural sky / I was restful as I had reached my place of salvation / The surface as a material structure neither heaven nor solace / Only the wind / Only quenched light / Lulled into covering until everything was the same / soul object well formed / the irreducible always already truth / Hidden in the trees / It is nothing i am here i am still here.” Visitors are encouraged to leave a little token behind as part of a community garden of objects, a reminder of solace and salvation.