disappearing acts: Performance by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
Saturday, January 13, 2018
6 to 8pm
![[Image Description: Artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs looks forward into the camera. She is wearing a black, buttoned shirt, turquoise earrings, and a head wrap comprised of blue, gray-blue, white, and yellow colors.]](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bb3c259e666696f13768624/5bc51485782e40f53a4b0420/5bc514bf782e40f53a4b10c7/1539642559174/LaTasha-Diggs_credit_WillySomma-copy-copy.jpg?format=original)
[Image Description: Artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs looks forward into the camera. She is wearing a black, buttoned shirt, turquoise earrings, and a head wrap comprised of blue, gray-blue, white, and yellow colors.]
The closing event for our current exhibition The Supper Club featured writer, vocalist and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs' performance disappearing acts, a meditation that draws from found text, song lyrics, and multiple languages. Accompanied by composer and jazz drummer Sunny Jain, Diggs enacted how black and brown female bodies (of advanced years) encounter erasure within society, asking the question of what it means to be a forty plus woman of color.
Bios
A writer, vocalist and sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK(Belladonna, 2013). Her interdisciplinary work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum, the Poesiefestival Berlin, Museum of Modern Art, the QOW conference in Slovakia, the International Poetry Festival in Bucharest, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, the 2015 Venice Biennale and forthcoming in Beijing. As a curator and director, she has staged events at BAM Café, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, The David Rubenstein Atrium, The Highline, Poets House, and El Museo del Barrio. Diggs is the recipient of numerous awards from prestigious organizations such as the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Japan-US Friendship Commission, Creative Capital, and the Whiting Foundation. Co-founder and co-editor of Coon Bidness/SO4 magazine, she lives in Harlem.
Sunny Jain founded and plays dhol in the band, Red Baraat, one of the most successful Indian-American bands in North America, with performances worldwide over the past decade. He has collaborated, performed, or recorded with a wide range of artists including Peter Gabriel, Norah Jones, Junoon, Himanshu Suri (Swet Shop Boys/Das Racist), Vijay Iyer, Karsh Kale, Kailash Kher, Ali Sethi, Donny McCaslin, Pedrito Martinez, Ozomotli, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, and many others. Jain has been the recipient of composition and performance grants from NPR Music, Aaron Copland Music Fund, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, globalFEST Touring Fund, and MASS MoCA and received the Arts International Award in 2003 and 2005. Other accolades include speaking engagements at Harvard and New York University, profiles in Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC, and The Times of India (amongst many other recognized global media outlets), authoring two instructional drum books for Alfred Publishing (The Total Jazz Drummer and Drum Atlas: India), and participation in events at the White House and Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies.