Performance
Celebration of Life
Performance (2022)
Blue Mountain Center, New York
A physically embodied practice of climate grief, inspired by the book ‘Living in Denial’ by Kari Marie Norgaard.
“Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action?”
As an artist and designer in Miami – a city in the midst of environmental and social crisis due to climate change, with constant flooding, buildings collapsing on sinking land, and climate gentrification – the performance “Celebration of Life” responded to our desperate need to understand and feel the grief of climate loss in an emotional and embodied way.
So much of what I see in the news and in my algorithms is doom and nihilism in response to our rapidly changing conditions, and it’s hard not to feel paralyzed. As individuals, we are unable to comprehend emotionally the loss and danger of extinction, and are collectively stuck in cycles of disconnection and denial.
By hosting a celebration of life for the water in the style of western funerals- a cultural tradition where it’s socially permissible to feel outward grief- with white flowers and oral tributes, the ceremony offered viewers an emotional connection to grasp environmental loss.
Climate Optimism Ritual (2022)
Third World Feminist School, Miami, Florida
Collective dreaming on the environmental futures of Miami in collaboration with Black feminist literary scholar Marina Magloire and Miami’s Third World Feminist School.
At the Climate Optimism Ritual, we meditated on Miami's environmental futures, created floral offerings for the water and read ecofeminist poems by Lucille Clifton. The resulting life-affirming embodiment ceremony offered viewers an emotional connection to grasp our environmental responsibilities, inspiring care and collective healing.
there is a star
more distant
than eden
Something there
is even now
preparing
- Lucille Clifton