Ace AIR: BLACK LIKE OBSIDIAN – By Keioui Keijaun Thomas

BLACK LIKE OBSIDIAN – By Keioui Keijaun Thomas
For Ace Artist in Residence  – with Performance Space New York

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The exhibition Black like Obsidian builds on over a decade of the artist’s work exploring the affective and material conditions of Black and trans identity and expands on her ongoing practice of world-building to create spaces of safety, joy, and healing. 

For this new installation, Thomas builds an immersive landscape by accumulating utilitarian objects like latex-free gloves, packing tape, recycled cardboard, construction signage, and plant matter – materials associated with gendered caretaking labor and climate catastrophe. She repurposes these common materials to create curtains , paper-bag soldiers, games, and other built and natural formations. For the artist, this is the setting of a speculative future where trans femmes have survived a mass extinction, highlighting how camouflage and metamorphosis serve as strategies for survival, and ultimately, transcendence.

About

Keioui Keijaun Thomas’ artistic practice engages with the multifaceted realms of Black identity formation, encompassing affective, material and economic dimensions. Through a captivating fusion of sculpture and performance, Thomas explores the transient nature of the “doll” as both a work in progress and a formidable elemental force. Utilizing an array of materials such as plastic, hair, sugar, rubber, tape, acrylic, water, enamel, glitter and skin, Thomas creates tableaus that are intricately intertwined with her own body. @keioui

Over the last 40 years, Manhattan-based Performance Space New York has been propelling cultural, theoretical and political discourse forward. Futurity and world-building connect the interdisciplinary works they present — works that dissolve the borders of performance art, dance, theater, music, visual art, poetry and prose, ritual, nightlife, food, film and technology, shattering artistic and social norms alike. @performance.space.newyork

Ace Hotel’s Artist in Residence program is the embodiment of our deep conviction that artists deliver us a critical lens through which to understand the world and ourselves. On a quarterly basis, and curated in partnership with creative collectives and art institutions that inspire us, we invite artists across the globe to turn one of our hotel rooms into their studio for a month. Given time and space to create, the artist’s resultant body of work is then exhibited or showcased at Ace and shared with the public. @acehotelbrooklyn