During a recent conversation with the Center’s visiting scholar Kristy Edmunds, curator Claire Tancons discussed the complex issue of institutional resistance among artists of particular backgrounds. She argues that artists of African descent who refrain from participating in certain artistic practices, because they fear they may be “pigeon-holed and ghettoized,” may miss opportunities to be a part of the larger discourse around performance art. Tancons encourages these artists to “open up the frame…to reclaim these territories and actually fully embody them…because we are losing so much.”
Edmunds is the Center’s visiting scholar and is executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Tancons is a curator, writer, and researcher whose work focuses on carnival, public ceremonial culture, and popular movements. This conversation took place at the Center on November 24, 2014.
