ARTISTS
David Ian Bellows/Griess, Nia Nottage, xtian w
Join us for the final Sunday Service of the Spring season, curated by shawné michaelain holloway! In a round-robin style format inspired by Chicago’s DIY scene, artists David Ian Bellows/Griess, Nia Nottage, and xtian w bring an evening of video, movement, and poetry works in response to the following prompt:
“Caged. Restricted. Routinized. Disciplined. Landlocked. Bound. Promised. Abiding. For keeps, keepsakes, being kept. Domestication. Wrangling. Being a pet. Seclusion. Saving. No matter where you go, it’s there. New construction. Bauhaus. Lucid dreaming. Sleep paralysis. Barriers. Doors. What’s on the other side? Claustrophobia. Warmth. Wonder. Silence. Cushion. Bed. Returning to reflection. Alone time.”
About the Artists
David Ian Bellows/Griess (born Omaha, NE 1984) explores themes of control, labor, and sexual play through DIY surveillance to relay the physicality and the resilience of the body and what might be possible/impossible for the body to sustain.
Nia Nottage is a performance artist and founding member of performance collective Steph Christ – https://stephs.net. Recent projects include POSSESSION (2017-8) at Real Estate Fine Art, Device Controlled (2016) at Panoply Performance Lab, Gloss (2019) at Shawn Escarciga’s Inaugural Hallway Show, LOVE LETTERS//TIME ALONE (2018) at Human Trash Dump, Frances Yeoland: Circula (2018) at 959 Kent Ave, You Should Wake Up Earlier (2017) with No Total, Programs Associate at Artists Space, Dysfunctional poetry reading at MoMA PS1 (2017), and Curatorial Fellow at The Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (2019).
xtian w is a non binary trans femme writer and performer. Their poems and essays appear in [PANK], No, Dear, VIDA, Bone Bouquet, Jaded Ibis, and Hematopoiesis Press, among others. Current creative—life interests include Medusa, hysteria, Trans sensorialities, weaving and braiding, coriander, ancestry, gut bacteria, ghazals, list poems, friendship beyond heteronormativity, boundaries, and houseplants. An Aquarius sun/ Capricorn moon/ Virgo rising, xtian is an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU and paints their nails in Brooklyn.
About the Curator
Shawné Michaelain Holloway is a new media artist using sound, video, and performance to shape the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally in spaces like The New Museum (NYC, NY), Sorbus Galleria (Helsinki, Fi), The Kitchen (NYC, NY) Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, UK), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL). Currently, Holloway teaches in the New Arts Journalism department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the exploration of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.
Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson. Stephanie Acosta is an interdisciplinary artist who places the materiality of the ephemeral at the center of her work, questioning meaning-making and manufactured limitations through her multiple practices. Alexis Wilkinson is the Director of Exhibitions and Live Art at Knockdown Center.