As the live arts return amidst an ongoing pandemic, public programs at the Armory will offer a series of intimate talks, salons, symposia, performances, and other activations curated by professor, scholar, and curator Tavia Nyong’o. As social gathering remains both vital and challenging, we explore how art can address the fault-lines in our racial and social order that 2020 laid bare. How can artists speak to this moment, holding space for discovery, deliberation, and experimenting, while claiming the environment we all need?
Previously This Season
Salon: Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation
Sunday, February 20, 2022
3:00pm–7:00pm
This Sunday Salon offers an opportunity to engage with the vision of Rashaad Newsome‘s Assembly by bringing the artist in dialogue with his collaborators and others engaged in the freedom fight for personal and collective liberation. Through roundtable discussions and a performance showcase, paired with an opportunity to experience Newsome’s world-building taken to new heights in the Drill Hall, this salon will invite attendees to take a quantum leap into Black visual complexity and spirit.
3:00pm–4:00pm: Roundtable with Video Transmissions
What happens when we take “the paradox of the Black experience and the advancement of technology as a jumping off-point” as Rashaad Newsome asks? This panel of artists and theorists discuss the emergence of a Black quantum visual language.
Featuring: Rashaad Newsome, Saidiya V. Hartman, Kiyan Williams, Tavia Nyong’o, Aimee Meredith Cox, with quantum interpolations from Arthur Jafa and Ruha Benjamin
4:15pm–5:10pm: Showcase of Artists from Assembly
Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Ms. Boogie featuring El Joven, Puma Camillê
Sneak peek of Johnny Symons’ Get Your 10s
5:25pm–6:30pm: Talkback with Artists From Assembly
Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Ms. Boogie, Puma Camillê, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, moderated by Tavia Nyong’o
Salon/Performance: Queer Hip Hop Cypher with Krudxs Cubensi and Shanté Paradigm Smalls
Sunday, May 15, 2022
3:00pm–7:00pm
Join us for an exploration of the queer origins and aesthetics of hip hop through discussion, film, performance, and food. The event includes a Black healing portal curated by Astraea award-winning duo Krudxs Cubensi, a session with Soul Fire Farm on BIPOC vegan foodways and their connection to community-centered activism, and a panel discussion centering on the queer underground hip hop scene led by Hip Hop Heresies author and scholar Dr. Shanté Paradigm Smalls.
Archer Aymes Retrospective: A Juneteenth Exhibition
Sunday, June 19, 2022 at 3:00pm
Free with RSVP
Explore the legacy of emancipation through an immersive art installation curated by Carl Hancock Rux with Tavia Nyong’o and Dianne Smith of newly discovered works by Archer Aymes, the elusive subject of Rux’s Obie-award winning play Talk, which had its premiere at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. The event also features a concert performance by mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Aaron Diehl from the operatic repertoire of Puccini, Weill, and Bernstein that touches upon various themes, from Aymes’ rumored closeness to Nina Simone to the desolation of family separation.
Skillshare
Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 12:00pm
Tickets: $25 (plus fees)
Join a range of Armory artists and partners for an enlightening and interactive afternoon of open studios, workshops, activations, and discussion for people of all ages to explore dance, poetry, music, and more.
BLOOM
Saturday, September 10, 2022 at 3:00pm
Tickets: $25 (plus fees)
Speculums have shown up in archaeological digs as far back as 79 AD amidst the dust of Pompeii. However, the apparatus most women experience today in vaginal exams is credited to the physician James Marion Sims, sometimes called the “father of American gynecology,” a moniker earned on the backs of experiments conducted on enslaved women. Rooted in both research and object-making, legendary artist Nao Bustamante creates a cross-disciplinary investigation centered around the design of this medical tool and its use in the history of the pelvic examination.
Joined by musician and performance artist Geo Wyex, interdisciplinary artist Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, and composer and reiki master Pamela Martínez, Bustamante creates a performance that is part séance, part pageant to make way for a new era of examination of the device as well as its patriarchal inventors. And while the desired result is an invitation to think about ways to make the tool less unpleasant for the millions of patients who encounter it each year, the work also boldly focuses on the speculum’s impact on timely issues of women’s health practices.
Symposium: Art at Water’s Edge
Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 11:00am, 2:00pm, and 4:00pm
Single Session: $25 (plus fees)
Day Pass (All Sessions): $45 (plus fees)
Artists, activists, and designers engage the meeting of land with water. Facing climate change and rising sea levels, this event links New York with communities across the nation and globe that sit at water’s edge. This afternoon activation is inspired by acclaimed director Peter Sellars’ call to “listen to the oceans,” and by director and scholar May Joseph’s call for cosmopolitan citizenship in “fluid New York.” From the work of Indigenous water protectors who challenge extractive futures to urban planners responding to waterfront access, Art at Water’s Edge will offer an intergenerational forum for the imagination in action.
Photo: Da Ping Luo
February 20–October 9, 2022
Health and Safety Protocols
Effective September 26, 2022, masks are optional—all guests are encouraged to wear a mask in the Armory to protect themselves and others. To view additional COVID-19 Policies, please visit our FAQs page.
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