Saturday, March 19th, at 6pm ET, 2022 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow Theodore Kerr presents BEYOND THE FLAT, his first program in THE BODY POPULAR series. The program features an outdoor performance by multi-disciplinary artist Zachary Fabri, based on a commissioned portrait of him by photographer Samantha Box at Weeksville’s historic site and cultural center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
From ground-breaking freedom fighter Sojourner Truth to Royal families around the world, people have long used portraits to communicate ideas about identity and power. With the advent of the selfie and contemporary discussions around representation, there is a growing sense of the limits and possibility of a portrait to capture the nuance and fullness of a person. Circulated images can raise the profile of an individual, capture the pulse of the moment, yet can also broadcast unhelpful and unexamined narratives.
BEYOND THE FLAT leans into the ambiguity around portraiture with a live performance by multi-disciplinary artist Zachary Fabri, based on a commissioned portrait of him by photographer Samantha Box. On the grounds of the Weeksville Heritage Center, the site of the first free Black community in pre-Civil War Brooklyn, Fabri will expand the proverbial frame to consider the lifeforce of a portrait, the sitter, the viewer, and the context of creation. Along the way, the project creates an opportunity for viewers to consider how a portrait circulates through history, individual analysis, and pop culture.
The site-specificity of BEYOND THE FLAT––performed on the same land where Weeksville residents built an autonmous community and enacted freedom for themselves in a time when slavery was still legal––emphasizes the impact of collective interpretation giving way to radical possibilities.
BEYOND THE FLAT is curated by Theodore (ted) Kerr as part of THE BODY POPULAR, his curated series of gatherings and broadcasts for ISSUE Project Room that looks at the ways ideas and information circulate within a period of massive social change. THE BODY POPULAR is a riff on the phrase, “The Body Politic,” a notion that groups of people together have power. Throughout the series, audiences, artists, and other collaborators are invited to consider the limits, possibilities, and responsibilities of the “popular.”
Attendees are invited to register for a guided tour of Weeksville’s Hunterfly Road Houses in advance of the performance, or in the following weeks, in order to learn more about the site’s historic significance. Tours on Saturday, March 19th are free with purchase of a ticket.
Zachary Fabri is an interdisciplinary artist engaged in lens-based media, language systems and the built environment; often complicating boundaries around studio research, performance, and socially engaged practice. Fabri’s work has been exhibited at Art in General, The Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, The Walker Art Center, The Brooklyn Museum, The Barnes Foundation, and Performa. Collaborations include projects at the Museum of Modern Art, the Sharjah Biennial, and Pace gallery. He is the recipient of the 2020 Colene Brown Art Prize and an upcoming solo exhibition at CUE Art Foundation.
Samantha Box is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer. In her studio-based practice, she makes images and objects that explore her intersecting diasporic Caribbean histories and identities. This work has been exhibited at the Houston Center of Photography (2019), and the Andrew Freedman House (2020), and was the focus of her residency at the Center of Photography at Woodstock in August 2021. Her earlier documentary work focused on New York City's community of queer and TGNB youth of color, and was widely recognized, notably with a NYFA Fellowship (2010), and shown, most prominently, as part of the ICP Museum’s Perpetual Revolution (2017) exhibition. She received an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from the International Center of Photography/Bard College (2019) and a certificate in Photojournalism and Documentary Studies from the International Center of Photography (2006).
Theodore (ted) Kerr is a writer, and organizer. He is the co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Culture Times of AIDS with Alexandra Juhasz (Duke 2022), and the curator of AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health: A People’s History of a Pandemic for the National Library of Medicine. He teaches at The New School and Manhattan College. He is a founding member of What Would an HIV Doula Do?.
