About
$9,180
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Holding Space is an immersive installation of hand-woven carpets and a place to connect people to the experience of embodied art making - working through social justice issues in community through movement and making together.
The exhibition will hold community workshops to help people explore our connections to the fabric of the universe and to each other. We will give people opportunities to come together to learn and make art and dance. Holding Space builds on our long history of sewing circles, quilting bees, and other forms of collective hand-making. We will connect art and craft to a journey that explores our origins as the descendants of stars alongside our current realities, engaging questions about oppression and liberation. Holding Space creates opportunities for people to make art together, to think and dialogue about our interconnectedness and about how our actions affect the universe and impact one another.
In collaboration with Destiny Arts Center and Royal Nonesuch Gallery we will facilitate dance, weaving, meditation, embodiment and sound healing workshops, and panel discussions and community conversations about universality, race, and gender. Art, movement, and creativity can heal. Holding Space lets us explore our power to create change in our communities.
We are excited that this project received an $8,000 matching grant from the East Bay Fund for Artists that must be matched by October 5th. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched 1:1 up to $8,000. We are raising $9,000 through this campaign to match the grant and to meet Kickstarter fees and other project costs.
Audience members will contribute to the creation of a community carpet as well as their own woven projects looking at space: outer space in the cosmos, embodied space in public life, inner space within ourselves, safe space in our communities.
By creating public, shared space where people create together, we connect to a long history of collective hand making. It has been in these spaces that communities have historically come together to share stories, visions, and hope for transformation. This project will continue this tradition. When we make and move together, we become a connected thread and weave a united vision for our local communities and our world.
The exhibition and events will take place at Royal NoneSuch Gallery in Oakland May 11 - June 23, 2019. There will be dance performances by the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (with whom Angie Wilson has collaborated since 2006 as Costume Designer) and See Through Soul. There will be a group meditation and dance workshop guided by Rashidi Omari, co-director of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company.
We will hold facilitated community conversations about dark matter, race, and universality, the theory of the multiverse, the metaphors of strings and fabric to describe the structure of the universe, slow craft and slowing time. Angie will also lead public weaving workshops. The goals of this project are to offer community members an embodied space for contemplation, conversation, and creativity. We will hold space to dialogue and make work connecting to the external universe and the worlds within our communities and ourselves.
What will your contribution support?
Funds will go toward cost of materials to fabricate carpets, installation and deinstallation of the work, artist fees as well as fees to compensate workshop facilitators, performers, and collaborators.
About the Artist:
Angie Wilson mines seismic cultural shifts and the subtleties of consciousness in her textile-based sculpture and installations. Her work has been exhibited at the de Young museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, di Rosa, Oakland Museum of California, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, City College of San Francisco, Cult/Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, and Root Division. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the de Young Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the National Institute of Art and Disabilities. Her work is featured in Queer Threads (ed John Chaich and Todd Oldham, AMMO Books, 2017) and Fray (by Julia Bryan-Wilson, University of Chicago Press, 2017).
Collaborators:
Rashidi Omari is known for his magnetic mashups of traditional dance styles. Hip Hop, B-Boying, Popping, Locking, Dancehall, Lindy, House, modern, and jazz are integral parts of his extensive repertoire. Performing professionally since 1998, he has danced with DREAM, Avatar Flux, Adia Whittaker Dance Company, Liberation Dance Theater, Joanna Haigood, and Kiandanda Dance Theater among others. Rashidi Omari is the head choreographer and co-director of the Oakland-based Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company. A gifted educator with over 14 years teaching experience, he offers classes and workshops nationally and internationally.
See Through Soul is an emerging dance company based in Oakland, CA. Directed by Mika Lemoine and Sheila Russell, this fresh and soulful company uses movement to express self and seek truth. The eclectic group draws inspiration from various street and club dance styles including hip hop, house, vogue and waackin' as well as contemporary dance and elements of tap.
Destiny Arts Center:
Since 1988, the Destiny Arts Center has been inspiring and igniting social change through the arts. DAC develops peaceful, powerful and creative young people through a unique combination of self-defense training and movement arts practice, engaging over 3,000 young people each year in arts practices at their North Oakland center and in public schools and community centers throughout the East Bay. DAC is committed to reaching young people with the least access to high quality arts education and the movement arts practices reflect the cultural diversity of our communities.
Royal NoneSuch Gallery:
Royal NoneSuch Gallery is an artist-run alternative art and event space located in Oakland, California. RNG is dedicated to creating community around art-based experiences that are thought provoking and conceptually rigorous, while also being accessible and fun. Through a framework of monthly exhibitions and related programs, RNG strives to maintain a dynamic schedule in which the gallery is continuously reinvented to reflect the spirit and process of an artist, specific program series, or collaboration.
The Royal NoneSuch Gallery is not motivated by commercial interests, but instead by working with other artists and creators to facilitate experimentation and social engagement through monthly exhibitions and events. Visitors to Royal NoneSuch can expect to see, hear, learn, experiment, and participate.
Some rewards:
- Your name on a piece of fabric to be woven into the Community Carpet in the exhibition.
- A VIP/ Donor Preview Reception for you and collaborators before the exhibition opens to the public.
- A studio visit to Angie Wilson's studio or private viewing of the exhibition.
- Original Artwork by Angie Wilson
Why Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a unique way for us to reach a broad audience of supporters which helps us build excitement for the project while simultaneously helping ensure its successful realization by providing crucial funds. We love how Kickstarter helps us build a community of friends and supporters who are invested in watching the exhibition develop and are passionate about innovative and ambitious art!
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Your pledge is tax-deductible. Where goods and services are provided by Destiny Art Center, the fiscal sponsor for Holding Space, in exchange for your contribution, the tax deductible amount excludes the fair market value of the goods and services provided. Please contact Angie Wilson if you require a tax donation letter.
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Images courtesy of Angie Wilson and Destiny Arts Center. Video footage courtesy of Destiny Arts New Media Arts Program and Yak Films. Video directed and produced by Sara Lafleur-Vetter .
Risks and challenges
We are fully prepared to complete the project as planned. We have a wonderful team to address any challenges that arise. Your contribution will make the vision and scope of this fantastic project come to life!
Thank you for your support!
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Funding period
- (29 days)