Also Belongs to Me/The World: Solo

Solo with Gabriele Christian
Saturday, June 10 | 3:30 pm (pre-show at 3:00 pm)

Trio with jose e. abad, Gabriele Christian, and NIC Kay
Wednesday, June 28 | 6:30 pm (pre-show at 6:00 pm)

Also Belongs to Me/The World is a solo and tethered trio performance, programmed over the course of two days, responding to James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room.  Both performances are free and open to the public.

Baldwin is a Harlem hometown hero, a forefather, a smacktalker, a diva, an auntie, a lonely world unto himself. For this solo performance, performer/choreographer Gabriele Christian considers Baldwin’s solitude, sensuality, and queer relationship to the United States, his home country,and reanimates the author, borrowing his particular movement patterns to build choreography, like a subtle and slippery seance.  

The pre-show will start at 3:00 pm where visitors are invited to view the work in the exhibition Invincible Black Soul: The Art of Bearing Witness while the performer sets the space. At 3:30 pm the performance will begin with the short film James Baldwin: From Another Place which was filmed in Istanbul, Turkey in 1970 by Turkish filmmaker Sedat Pakay.

Performance Advisory: May contain content unsuitable for minors

Also Belongs to Me/The World was curated in conjunction with the exhibition Invincible Black Soul: The Art of Bearing Witness on view in the SFAC Main Gallery trough July 8, 2023. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Gabriele Christian is an Oakland-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They are a founding member of BlaQ-led performance and land projects: &theruptureisnow; OYSTERKNIFE; and blaQyard. They’ve presented and collaborated internationally in multimedia productions and processes with choreographers, collectives and companies like jose e. abad/fugitivity labs, LXS DXS, Sherwood Chen, Lenora Lee Dance, SAMMAY, Skywatchers (ABD Productions), Kim Ip, Cornelius Sigourney/OX Productions, Robert Woodruff, Joe Goode Performance Group, Jess Curtis/Gravity, WePlayers, Larkin Street Youth Services, Destiny Arts Center, et hella al. Along with this experience, they've empowered the work and stories of Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) folk, black and brown youth, Tenderloin residents, and LGBTQ+ elders. At the heart of all of their work, they strive to excavate oral tradition and movement as conduits for urgent and equitable conversations around belonging, spirit, desirability, abundance, and care. More at gabriele.work or on IG: @gabriele.mov.