Caryl Churchill's Far Away

Shadi Habib Allah, Put to Rights, installation view, 2018. Photo: Useful Art Services Shadi Habib Allah, Put to Rights, installation view, 2018. Photo: Useful Art Services Written in 2000, Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away feels no less ingenious today, and maybe even more farsighted and unsettling in its treatment of fear, complicity, and corruption. For this live reading, proposed by Shadi Habib Allah, the artist invites Churchill’s play into the realm of his exhibition. Against this backdrop, artist and writer Anna Martine Whitehead, joined by AJ McClenon, Zachary Nicol, and Cristal Sabbagh, shapes a new presentation of Far Away—one that unfolds on its own terms while allowing for resonances with its surroundings and a larger social context. This event follows a walk-through of Habib Allah’s exhibition, also in the gallery, led by curator Solveig Øvstebø and beginning at 2pm. Presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc. Anna Martine Whitehead has been presented by the San José Museum of Art; Velocity Dance Center; Links Hall; AUNTS; Pieter; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She has developed her craft working closely with Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, BodyCartography Project, Julien Prévieux, Jesse Hewit, and the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, among others. Martine has written for Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, frieze, and Art Practical, and contributed to Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance (Oxford, 2017). Martine is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016). AJ McClenon was born and raised in “D.C. proper,” and is currently based in Chicago using performance practices, sound, video, movement, theatre and writing to share experiences living in a Black body. A.J. hopes that all the memories and histories that are said to have “too many Black people” are told and retold again. Zachary Nicol has worked as a collaborative and performing artist in theatre, dance, and film works by Ginger Krebs, Catherine Sullivan, Joanna Furnans, A.J. McClenon, Kristina Isabelle, Lio Mehiel, Sean Griffin, and others. His work and research have been exhibited at S1 (Portland), Dancemakers Centre for Creation (Toronto), Outerspace, Filmfront, Compound Yellow, Catalyst Ranch (Chicago), and in The Blueshift Journal. He studied at Northwestern University. Cristal Sabbagh is an art educator at Adlai E. Stevenson High School, a fine artist, and interdisciplinary movement artist. Her work is motivated by a multitude of areas such as: film, culture, history, death/rebirth, hip-hop, butoh and improvised sound.