Exhibition March 21 – May 25, 2024

March 21, 2024 at 7pm Margo Jefferson in Conversation with Harmony Holiday

The Kitchen @ Westbeth
165 Bank Street
New York, NY 10014
Gallery Hours 11am – 6pm Tuesday – Saturday

More Info: Harmony Holiday Black Backstage

Harmony Holiday’s project BLACK BACKSTAGE builds upon the artist’s latest book MAAFA (2022), a work that deals with the archetypes and sounds that form in and of the ruins after genocide and displacement.

Photos from show preview
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Inspired by the ways Black music is often born in these ruins and becomes their archive(s)—brought to the stage, the radio, and the album as necessity/commodity—the exhibition comprises a short film, prints of new writing, a sculptural, sound installation, occasional live performances, and a series of public conversations. Installed immersively, the various elements of the exhibition are parts of a whole and transform The Kitchen into a hybrid, liminal space that quotes the pared-down aesthetic of backstage spaces. The environment evokes the practical, immaterial aesthetic of a makeshift storefront church, revival meetings, faith healings, and other underground modes of instilling Black sacred and everyday rituals within the spectacle of performance. BLACK BACKSTAGE therein draws an intentional contradiction between the barren spaces that are left untended, and those that are cared for because they support the sale of Black spectacle.