Directory of Portayals
7:30pm–8:00pm
Photo by Sahra Motalebi
For PRELUDE, Motalebi presents scenes from her opera Directory of Portrayals. This work is an interdisciplinary examination of ideas about the nature of knowledge, interiority, and the indeterminate contours of relationality in digital communication. It is structured around a semiautobiographical libretto that Motalebi has written based on an ongoing text dialog with her sister who lives in Iran, to whom she bares a striking resemblance but has never met in person. Part of a larger body of work called Rendering What Remains, iterations of this piece have been performed as Flesh, Format at National Sawdust in Brooklyn and at Villa Empain in Brussels as Directory of Portrayals in the spring of 2016. This project is produced by Motalebi’s performance company Spoken Glass Productions.
Participating Artist: Dee Dorcas Beasnael
This event is part of a performance series from 6:00pm- 8:00pm, followed by a short discussion.
Start time is approximate.
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Sahra Motalebi
Photo by Tina Tyrell Sahra Motalebi is a visual artist, vocalist and writer born in Birmingham Alabama, 1979. Her projects lay at the intersections of contemporary art, architecture and performance. Her projects have been exhibited and her work has been performed internationally at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum Ludwig, Abrons Art Center and Vancouver Art Gallery. In 2008 Motalebi’s multi-channel video installation and vocal performance Such is the Game of Authenticity was performed at MoMA PS1. Her shadow play Intangible Heritages, Belief’s Demise was presented at SculptureCenter in 2014. She performed Sounds from Untitled Skies at The Kitchen in New York on September 15, 2015. Motalebi has collaborated with artists Kai Althoff, Antony Hegarty (Antony & the Johnsons), Jesper Just, Will Rawls. She has collaborated with Kai Althoff, Antony Hegarty, Jesper Just, Mariah Robertson, Will Rawls, Sibyl Kempson and Sophia Al-Maria. She has released 5 studio albums on her label Static Recital. Motalebi attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. She lives in New York.
Upcoming: Performance at the Villa Empain in Brussels Oct 2016
