5:30 p.m.
SCAD Museum of Art
601 Turner Blvd.
Savannah, Georgia
Join the SCAD Museum of Art’s Evans Center for African American Studies for Sermon II: Our Mourning Due [a live performance], an experimental multimedia collaboration between exhibiting artists Akeema-Zane and Rena Anakwe. The contemporary artists come together to weave a dirge composed of their writings alongside the poem “Go Down Death” (1927) by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938). Inspired by Johnson’s words and Aaron Douglas’ (1899-1979) accompanying illustrations, they create a living, breathing offering to honor “what it means to rest in a time of mourning.” Extending themes in Johnson’s poem, Akeema-Zane and Anakwe consider the relationship between Black women, labor, and death.
Free and open to the public, this event is the second installment in a programmatic mini-series titled Sermons, presented as an extension of the exhibition Aaron Douglas: Sermons. Combining both secular and spiritual affiliations, the Sermons series focuses on sites of inquiry that provide upliftment and/or passageways toward liberation.
To RSVP, email [email protected].
About the artists
Akeema-Zane is an artist and researcher who centers experimental approaches and practices in literature, cinema, and performance, as well as sound/music, housed under the arm a²z, which includes deejaying, composition, and scoring/sound design. The artist’s work has been published in various literary and musical projects in the digital and physical realms including There’s a Monopoly On Change (2015) and albums by artists Liv.e, Pink Siifu, L’Rain, and lojii. The artist is currently a board director of the School of Making Thinking.
Rena Anakwe is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, poet, and healer working primarily with sound, visuals, and scent. Exploring intersections between traditional healing practices, spirituality, and performance, she creates works focused on sensory-based, experiential interactions using creative technology. Anakwe is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, and New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. She is a recipient of the 2021–22 MacDowell Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Arts and the 2021 Canadian Women Artists’ Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Canadian Women’s Club of New York. She has participated in the Jack Nusbaum Artist Residency at Brooklyn Academy of Music (2022) and the Jerome Foundation AIRspace Residency for Performing Artists at Abrons Arts Center (2020–21). Anakwe is a 2020 Radiophrenia commissioned artist, a 2019 ISSUE Project Room artist in residence, a 2019 Abrons Arts Center Sound Series commissioned artist, and a 2018 Signal Culture artist in residence. She has exhibited extensively in New York at MoMA PS1, Pioneer Works, Dia Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Museum of Arts and Design, the Museum of the Moving Image, Park Avenue Armory, the Theatre for a New Audience, H0L0, Le Poisson Rouge, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and Danspace Project, among many other venues in the U.S. and Europe, and was a guest curator for Knockdown Center’s Sunday Service. Under the moniker A Space for Sound, Anakwe released the first in an ongoing audio series titled “Sound Bath Mixtape vol. 1” in summer 2020 through New York-based label and collective PTP. Her album Sometimes underwater (feels like home) was released in fall 2021 through RVNG Intl.’s Commend There label. She is based in Brooklyn by way of Nigeria and Canada.
Established in 2011, SCAD MOA’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies celebrates the imaginative breadth and expressive legacy of African American art and culture. Through experimental public programs, immersive workshops, riveting lectures, and topical symposia, the Evans Center immerses students and community members in the rich tapestry of Black expression.