Art Talk

Directed by Lee Sunday Evans

$10 general admission/$5 members, students

Part artist talk, part memoir, part gleefully rambling cultural essay, Suzanne Bocanegra’s performance work mines her Texan upbringing, aesthetic influences, and far-reaching imagination to make sense of our collective subconscious. In Farmhouse/Whorehouse, inspired by her grandparents who lived on a small farm across the road from the Chicken Ranch (better known as the “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”), Bocanegra uses text, PowerPoint, country music, and video projections to consider the American myth of rural utopia. Following her acclaimed collaborations with actors Paul Lazar (When a Priest Marries a Witch, an Artist Lecture) and Frances McDormand (Bodycast: An Artist Lecture, 2013 Next Wave), this third installment in the series enlists the talents of Brooklyn-based actress Lili Taylor.

Suzanne Bocanegra is a visual artist living and working in New York.  A major show of Bocanegra’s work titled Poorly Watched Girls was presented at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia in 2018-19. A solo show of her work will be the inaugural show for Artcake, an exhibition space opening in September in Brooklyn. Her most recent performance is FarmhouseWhorehouse, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Lili Taylor, commissioned in 2017 by the CounterCurrent Festival in Houston and which has traveled to UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance at the Ace Theater, The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Wexner
Center for the Arts, among others.

She is currently working on a performance commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and UCLA called “Honor,” based on the largest tapestry owned by the Met, demonstrating the meaning of ‘honor’ to a 16th century ruler.

Doors open at 4:30 PM.