The movements varied from performance to performance, and depended on the shape and size of the sculpture, but the intervention of a human form within one of the sculptures — a hand stretched out to the wall, or propped up on her head mid-handstand — seemed to enhance the humanlike characteristics of Nengudi’s work, until both forms were indistinguishable from each other.1
Black feminist being is improvisational as a rule. If the outcome can be predicted, it has already been named, owned, and foreclosed. Any means and methods of controlling outcomes requires oppressive protocols.
Spend 70% of your time at home, in the studio, or in the forest. On the good days, you’ll find all three to be the same thing.
I give them access to my time. I let them kiss me. Could you imagine them wanting anything more than that? Exchanging time is an act of intimacy.
Release work as soon as it comes like a cycle of breath. (Breathwork)
Meditate to transition through each activity of the day. Meditate when you awake, meditate after you exercise, meditate before leaving the studio, meditate before bed. Breathe as punctuation. Breathe as scene transition.
Keep around witnesses to your transformation over time. Let people who love you be rehearsal mirrors to your experiments in being.
Take field trips to go see art on the weekends.
Work on accepting pedagogy is absolutely essential and absolutely harmful. (All proposals are creative. All proposals are problematic.)
Text message idea for saying no: “I am in a womb of creative energy right now and I don’t want to break it.” Or type: “No”
Withholding is erotic.
Let it feel good.
Pleasure is the goal.
As soon as you become aware the matter is settled.
Love is choosing.
Lovia Gyarkye writing about Senga Nengudi’s work in a New York Times piece titled, “An Artist’s Continuing Exploration of the Human Form” published Nov. 9, 2020.