Towards a Black Testimony: A Performance
Saturday, April 30, 2022 | 7:30pm doors / 8pm show
Location: The Lab (2948 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103)
Tickets $10 (discounted or free for The Lab members)
Click here for recording of event

Mask & proof of vaccination required for entry

London-based artist duo Languid Hands and performance artist Gabriele Christian join in a collaborative performance to expand interpretations of silence into movement and public space. This collaboration continues Languid Hands’ “reflection on sound, volume, and blackness in the context of the display and consumption of contemporary Black art.”

The performance will be followed by a conversation between Leila Weefur and Languid Hands.

Co-organized by The Lab, Minnesota Street Project, and /(slash) on the occasion of the exhibition Codes of Silence curated by Leila Weefur and on view at / through May 7th, 2022.

Attendees will receive a free copy of the Codes of Silence publication by WORK/PLAY with their ticket.

This event is made possible by generous support from The Lab and Minnesota Street Project Foundation.

Gabriele Christian is an Oakland-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk. Experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation, they locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. At the heart of all of their work, they strive to excavate oral tradition and movement as conduits for equitable conversations around belonging, spirit, desirability, abundance, and care.

Languid Hands is a London-based artistic and curatorial collaboration between DJ, filmmaker and curator Rabz Lansiquot and interdisciplinary writer and artist Imani Mason Jordan (fka Imani Robinson). Their practice explores collaboration, curation, black study and experimentation across exhibitions, moving image, text, performance, publications and public programming, alongside peer-led artists development and residencies. In 2021, Languid Hands curated the Frieze LIVE programme and they are currently curatorial fellows at London’s Cubitt Artists, delivering their programme, No Real Closure.

Leila Weefur (He/They/She) is an artist, writer, and curator. Through video and installation, their interdisciplinary practice examines the performativity intrinsic to systems of belonging. The work brings together concepts of sensorial memory, abject Blackness, hyper surveillance, and the erotic. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including Locust Projects, The Wattis Institute, McEvoy Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, SFMOMA, Museum of the African Diaspora, and Smack Mellon. Weefur is a lecturer at Stanford University.

Image credits: Languid Hands by Hydar Dewachi (2019), courtesy of Jerwood Arts London. Gabriele Christian by Ishmael Agyapong, courtesy of the artist