Solo
Softest
Evening Hours
New York, NY
June 22, 2019
Installation view of Soft Wavesy, photo installation, 2019, in "Softest," 2019, curated by Elspeth Walker and David Armacost, at Evening Hours, New York, NY. Photo by Jordan Bernier.
Softest is an evening comprising of the installation Soft Waves and the performance Spoken Softly. The evening is dedicated to examining the demands of "softening" that are requested of Black women's bodies in society---from job prospects to romantic ones---be that in their voice, their manners, or their hair. What would it mean to live and enact a body that is dedicated to softest? The evening will trace the historical ways in which Black women have tried to answer this question while also navigating the artist's present failure to be "soft."