Hildas and Trojans + The Part That’s Human
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
April 19, 2021 - April 25, 2021
Hildas and Trojans and The Part That’s Human are part of a larger work that plumbs the consanguinity between humans, animals, events, objects, beliefs, and the ways we sustain or destroy each other.
Karen Kaz Sherman's work incorporates her background in dance, writing, theater, music, and the handyman arts. Hands-on in all aspects of her performances, she choreographs and performs, builds sets and props, designs sound and video, and writes text. Her consideration of craft and visual art, including glassblowing, woodworking, and sculpture, illuminate how the body extends to and through other materials, culminating in an interdependent world where objects elucidate bodies, choreography is language, and words become tools.
Her work has been presented nationally by Walker Art Center, P.S. 122, Center for the Art of Performance UCLA, PICA/TBA Festival, Fusebox Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Hair+Nails Gallery, American Realness, The Southern Theater, Diverseworks, Movement Research, Highways Performance Space, ODC, and many others. Honors include the 2020 Herb Alpert Award in Dance; McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography and Dance; a NY Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award; multiple MacDowell Fellowships; and residencies through Vermont Performance Lab, Movement Research, ADI/Lumberyard, and the Bogliasco Foundation program in Liguria, Italy. She was a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellow in The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and is an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence in its dance program. Her writing has been featured in such forums as e-flux journal, Movement Research Performance Journal, Hair+Nails Gallery Zine, Good Job, Criticism Exchange, mnartists.org, and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman. For more information, please visit karenshermanperformance.org.
Hildas and Trojans and The Part That’s Human will be projected each afternoon and evening, visible directly from the street at 1224 W Loyola Ave while the space itself remains closed to the public. These video works are a being shared as part of Movement Studies – a new series of screenings, performance, research, workshops, and reading groups created by artists in Chicagoland and across the Great Lakes region investigating social and environmental transitions.
First image: video still from Hildas and Trojans; second image: video still from The Part That’s Human.