Before Form

April 24 – May 16, 2020

The Before Form Collective brings together improvisational visual artists, movement artists, and musicians. For this opening, the artists will create spontaneously, driven by interacting between different mediums. These artists, of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, working with different art forms of the African diaspora are rooted in resistance, healing, and the pursuit of liberation. They understand improvisation as a central aspect of afro-diasporic expression and a sophisticated practice that contests the silencing of oppressed and marginalized people, as evidenced in forms like American jazz and hip hop, Afro-Brazilian capoeira, and Afro-Puerto Rican bomba, all linked to the legacies of slavery.

Their work is rooted in an interest in exploring the creative process before things/matter take shape/form, a space where past/present/future merge in their possibilities to give voice to new and unexpected realities. Content and form arise in real time. This process integrates all the disciplines allowing the artists to co-create one experience with multiple manifestations and layers of meaning.

The exhibit will be in the Jane Sandelin Gallery.