Naama Tsabar featured at MCA Denver: Movements Toward Freedom

The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver announced its fall exhibition, Movements Toward Freedom, on view Sept. 20, 2024-Feb. 2, 2025. The exhibition will explore the power, possibility and vulnerability of bodily movement in contemporary life.

Linking physical and social definitions of movement, Movements Toward Freedom examines how the articulation of our bodies, collectively and singularly, informs and shapes a vital society. Showcasing recent work and new commissions that span genres of performance, sculpture, video, painting and installation, the exhibition considers the ways that physical movement plays an integral role in exercising personal and collective agency as a means for community-building, civic change and liberation, as well as serving as an antidote to strife and a vehicle for healing and care.

“Movements Toward Freedom considers questions about how we move - and move together - in the year 2024,” said exhibition curator Leilani Lynch. “Emerging from the disconnectedness of the pandemic era, the exhibition aims to ground viewers in their physical bodies, creating a dynamic space activated by performances and programs, while also inviting active participation from museum visitors.”

Time-based programming is core to the framework of Movements. The selected artists engender expanded notions of performance and movement into the artworks on view in the exhibition, over half of which will be activated during monthly programming of live activations, performances, and participatory events. This exhibition will host the most accompanying programs of any project MCA Denver has organized to-date.

Kambui Olujimi,Props, 2023.Watercolour, ink, graphite on paper

Many artists in the exhibition – including Sadie Barnette, EJ Hill, Kambui Olujimi and Tara Jae – look to historical examples of radical spaces of gathering and togetherness in order to find inspiration and perspective, while other works by GeoVanna Gonzalez and Naama Tsabar act as platforms and structures that foster self-empowerment and creative expression. The strength, vulnerability and resilience of the body are explored in many artworks in the exhibition, including examples by Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Liz Magic Laser, Ronny Quevedo, and Laura Shill. These artists borrow tropes, aesthetics and techniques from the athletic and fitness industries to investigate and critique contemporary wellness culture while asking us to think about what “fitness” means, especially when confronted with threats to social and political health. Others, like Senga Nengudi and Elena Dahn, foreground the experience of motherhood and birth through their works, highlighting the inherent elasticity and memory of skin.

Elena Dahn, Pendiente, 2024. Performance at PROA21, 2022

Movements Toward Freedom features newly commissioned installation and performance works by Brendan Fernandes and Steffani Jemison. Fernandes’ project manifests as a hybrid of sculpture, sound, a space for performances choreographed by Fernandes, and a platform for Denver’s dance community. The installation resembles the construction of a dance studio, incorporating the museum’s ergonomic “sprung” floor, in addition to familiar elements like barres and mirrors regularly used by dancers during class and rehearsal in preparation for performances. These practical forms are reimagined by Fernandes to invite professionals, enthusiasts, and interested visitors to move within the space. Etched mirrors adorning the walls and vinyl patterns on the floor provide scores that performers and visitors alike can follow. Additionally, the space will be available for local dancers and companies to use for rehearsal. By offering the installation as accessible and open, Fernandes aims to address the scarcity of studio and performance space regularly experienced throughout the dance community.

Karon Davis, Overture, 2023. Plaster, steel, glass eyes, tulle, crown, and ice pack

Steffani Jemison’s commission builds from her intensive research into the politics of flight as they relate to Black liberation efforts. Her installation combines drawing, a recycled cyclorama (theater backdrop) to produce the effect of distance, and her video Bound (2024) to allude to the revolutionary and liberatory potential of physical movement. Jemison will also stage a performance in the form of a play, titled Flight Theater, at the museum’s satellite space, The Holiday, as an interdisciplinary meditation on untethering ourselves from earth; floating,drifting, and soaring; and the unexpected limitations of an omniscient point of view.

A digital publication with commissioned essays and documentation will be published in late 2024.

Exhibiting artists: Sadie Barnette, Ben Coleman, Elena Dahn, Karon Davis, Brendan Fernandes, Geovanna Gonzalez, EJ Hill, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Tara Jae, Steffani Jemison, Liz Magic Laser,