Evoked?

Lumkile Mzayiya and I collaborated in 2019 and decided to push our joint efforts into a new realm when COVID-19 forced us to stay in separate provinces.   

"We are both drawn to the emotive power of performance. In our brainstorming and planning sessions over ZOOM for this project, it became clear that both of our artwork have also started centering around issues that make us feel trapped, silent, isolated, frustrated, and more uncomfortable emotions. We started talking about how we wish it was allowed to express these feelings when they come up in public, instead of keeping them inside our bodies until we are in a safe space at home.

Keeping difficult feelings inside, to us, seem to add to getting stuck mentally and even affects our physical well-being. We want to create a space where individuals feel free to respond honestly about what it is they feel in connection to our bodies in performance- a space where feelings of being lost, enclosed, stuck, confused, and more are normalized and encouraged to be expressed. A space where viewers get to see into our homes as we process emotions we don’t feel we are allowed to in public. A space where the artist does not prescribe (in over-complicated words) what it is her/his audience is supposed to feel but instead shifts the focus of the piece entirely to the first unscripted reaction of the viewer."  

Lumkile Mzayiya and I did three performances together. Anyone with access to Zoom could log on and watch us for 7 minutes performing. We then asked the viwers to share what was evoked in them by the performance in any way they wanted to. ​