Maurice Moore. “Drawing While Black, aka Black Boy Joy”, Performance (2020) for Performance Drawing 2021 Exhibition at the Centre for Recent Drawing, London
Artist statement
Based on performance practice, my “Drawing While Black aka Black Boy Joy” performance explores how Black queer people have implemented and created a means of survival through performance. Black performance serves as a mode of active radical resistance drawing upon traditions and technologies such as call and response, improvisation, masking, reading, throwing shade, and African American Vernacular English (AAVE). In my piece, I literally dance and/or move the Black body to create the work that determines the movement. This piece explores the tactile experience of “drawing while Black,” while, implementing synesthetic ideas and Black foodways into my practice. The performative aspect of drawing unconsciously allows me to be vulnerable, and to channel a range of energies. I become a living drawing in both the archival and non-archival sense. During the performance I blindfold myself for long periods of time while listening to music as I draw. My whole Black body, and not just my hands, manipulates the media and materials. Therefore, my whole Black body becomes/functions as site, that moves not simply across a two-dimensional surface, but through it and space as well. Drawing on tradition of Black and queer performance has broadened my theoretical understanding of what it means to reconstruct, and simultaneously deconstruct my Blackness and my sexuality. Lastly, these two-dimensional renderings or visual leftovers if you will are the end result from this performance.
Land Acknowledgment:
Patwin
Miwko
Walli
Artist Bio
Maurice Moore is currently a doctoral Performance Studies Candidate at the University of California-Davis. His critical essays, fictions, and visual works has appeared in Existere Journal, New World Theatre, bozalta Collective, Harbor Review, Rigorous, Wicked Gay Ways, Storm Cellar Journal, Loud and Queer Zine, Strukturriss Quarterly Journal, HIVES Buzz-Zine, EX/POST MAGAZINE, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Confluence, Pending: Communication and Critical Cultural Studies Journal, and Pending: Queer Cats: A Journal of LGBTQ Studies. From 2011 to 2021, he has exhibited work and performed at the Pending: Calabar Gallery New York NY, Medford Arts Center in New Jersey, Memorial Union Gallery in Fargo North Dakota, the International House Davis (I-House) in Davis California, The Center for Visual Artists in Greensboro North Carolina, Christina Ray Gallery in Soho New York, the Lee Hansley Gallery in Raleigh North Carolina, the Gallery 307 + Orbit Galleries in Athens Georgia, Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro North Carolina, and performed with Rios/Miralda for the Garbage Celebration in Madison Wisconsin. Throughout his career he has been awarded residences at the Penland School of Crafts, Ox-Bow, the Rios/Miralda Garbage Celebration Residency, The Verge Residency of The Ali Youssefi Project (AYP) at the Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento California, 2021 Online Residency Zoeglossia Fellowship 2020-21 Cohort in New Mexico State University in New Mexico at Las Cruces, and Pending: Djerassi Resident Artists Program 2022 Cohort. Lastly, Moore has taken part of numerous conferences such as Practice as Research ZOOMposium Spring 2021 April 16th 2021 through May 21st 2021 at University of California-Davis Davis California, Temporal Drawing Queer Traces panel for the TRACEY Drawing Research Network Conference February 2021 through July 2021 at Loughborough University in Loughborough Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England, and the WTF Performance Studies?-Mini Conference in the Della Davidson Studio at the University of California-Davis in Davis California.
Maurice Moore
Performance Studies Doctoral Candidate
University of California-Davis
Website: https://maurice-moore-mkx7.squarespace.com
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