PopRally Presents Petra Collins: In Search of Us

Photo by Alycia Kravitz

Last Saturday, March 18, I produced PopRally Presents Petra Collins: In Search of Us with MoMA’s PopRally committee. A little bit of background from PopRally’s website: PopRally is a series of events at MoMA and MoMA PS1 that serve as a gateway for young and diverse audiences to engage with the Museum. Led by a cross-departmental committee of Museum staff, PopRally produces dynamic programs including artist collaborations, performances, film screenings, and digital content that encourage new and experimental ways of engaging with modern and contemporary art.

The PopRally x Petra project that was more than a year in the making, and in the end it came together seamlessly–thanks to the helping hands of a pretty large team. The event incorporated the works of three digital artists–Madelyne Beckles (@bellhoox, who also co-curated In Search of Us with Petra), Grace Miceli (@artbabygirl) and Aleia Murawski (@aleia), which were hosted on Instagram before the event.

Photo by Alycia Kravitz

Also from PopRally’s website:

“PopRally presents Petra Collins: In Search of Us, an evening of performance, music, and digital art conceived and developed by Collins with artist and close collaborator Madelyne Beckles. The event comprises a live, three-hour tableau in the Agnes Gund Garden Lobby, a “digital salon” hosted on Instagram, a live musical performance by Junglepussy, and a set by DJ Madeline Poole.

Drawing from Lorraine O’Grady’s seminal 1992 essay “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity,” Collins and Beckles will stage a live tableau in celebration of the female form. The performers will confront traditional representations of the female body throughout the art-historical canon, which tended to exclude bodies of work by such historical “others” as women, gender nonconforming individuals, and persons of color. Addressing this history through the lens of the contemporary woman—characterized by autonomy, sexuality, intersectionality, and agency—Collins presents an homage to the odalisque that highlights how women’s bodies have traditionally been both venerated and degraded. In O’Grady’s words, “She is jezebel and mammy, prostitute and female eunuch, the two in one.” Expanding upon the live performance, Collins also invited Beckles, Grace Miceli, and Aleia Murawski to create short videos as part of a “digital salon” on Instagram—in a nod to the 19th-century Salon des Independants—using the platform to re-examine the role of the canon in a contemporary context.”

Artists Madelyne Beckles and Petra Collins (Photo by Alycia Kravitz)

In advance of the event, I also interviewed Petra for PopRally’s Creative New York blog (conversations about art and life in New York City).

Photo by Alycia Kravitz

Set design: Lauren Nikrooz (@laurennikrooz)
Costumes: Zara Mirkin (@zaraeloise)

Photo by Alycia Kravitz

Junglepussy, her dancers, and DJ Joey Labeija killed their set.

Photo by Alycia Kravitz

Tableau performers:

Monica Hernandez (@monicagh_)
Samira Farius (@samiralfarius)
Kalena (@yiauekitalki)

Photo by Alycia Kravitz