THE SINKING SHIP/PROSPERITY Currents
THE SINKING SHIP/PROSPERITY Currents, program series Currents is a series of programs at the gallery that accompany and flow with the evolving exhibition Jota Mombaça: THE SINKING SHIP/PROSPERITY , on view at KADIST San Francisco from October 27, 2022–January 28, 2023. Currents will activate the installed works through conversation, performance, and publication, as encounters that deepen public engagement with Mombaça’s interdisciplinary practice and research. All programs are free and open to the public. Capacity is limited, with accessible seating available. Masks are required indoors. Current 1 – Conversation with Jota Mombaça and Darla Migan Monday, November 14, 2022, 6–7 pm Join us for a dynamic conversation with interdisciplinary artist Jota Mombaça and art critic and philosopher Darla Migan on the subjects of displacement, dispossession, the sounds of water, the material limits of racialization, and the role of water in global logistics, filtered through their South American and Caribbean upbringings. Mombaça will participate by phone, reading poems that guide the performances in this body of work, prompting Migan’s in-person reflections on the installation. This event is co-presented with the California College of the Arts Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. View a recording of the conversation here . Current 2 – Performance by Jota Mombaça and debut of waterwill (2022) Thursday, December 8, 2022, 6–7:30 pm Jota Mombaça will give a special performance titled Grieving Time (2022) for the debut of waterwill (2022), a video work that draws from footage of the fabric sculptures in the exhibition sinking, floating and resurfacing in various bodies of water where they were produced: a Venetian lagoon, an Amsterdam canal, the San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. The video projection will be installed part way during the course of the exhibition THE SINKING SHIP/PROSPERITY , as part of an unfixed installation, and as a ritual method to stay with the present. waterwill (2022) collaborators include Anti Ribeiro (sound composition) and Darwin Marinho (video post-production). View a recording of the performance here . Current 3 – Artist Publication Release Thursday, January 12, 2023, 6–7:30 pm Join us to celebrate the release of Jota Mombaça’s artist publication produced as part of THE SINKING SHIP/PROSPERITY. The limited-edition print publication includes drawings and poems that emerged during the exhibition research and production. The publication will be available at the gallery during and following the event. Designed in collaboration with Tugçe Evirgen Özmen. Printed by Colpa Press. BIOGRAPHY Jota Mombaça (b. 1991 Natal, Brazil. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Pronouns: she/they) defines themselves as a nonbinary travesti of color, Latin American slang that has been reappropriated by transfeminist activists and subjects as a local, political gender identity. The term reflects the artist’s interest in the tensions between desires for opacity and drives toward self-preservation as experienced by radicalized trans artists. Decolonialism, gender disobedience, and climate activism are often points of departure for their performative works, which have been exhibited at the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), the 32nd and 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2016 and 2020), and the 22nd Sydney Biennial (2020). Their work A Gente Combinamos De Não Morrer (BANDEIRA #1) / Us Agreed Not To Die (FLAG #1) (2018) is part of the KADIST collection. Darla Migan, PhD is an art critic and philosopher. In 2021 Migan started the online course “Philosophy for Artists” and began collaboratively curating with artists @variableterms. She is a recipient of an Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant, an alumnus of the ISP at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and on the faculty at The New School for Social Research. Her criticism on the conditions of contemporary art and visual culture can be read in Art in America, Artnet News, The Brooklyn Rail, Cultured Magazine, ShiftSpace, Spike, Sugarcane Magazine, and Texte zur Kunst.