#ama be

If you are near Miami during Art Basel week, there is going to be an absolutely phenomenal artist doing a performance about sugar cane. Please find @amabefree on Instagram and see the original post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CWp9AvDltSZ/

My upcoming performance is a two day durational performance centered on sugarcane, as both delight and vice.

The performance title bête noire, or “black beast” in French, a term that refers to an object of aversion,— a thorn in one’s side, sits in contrast to the irony of sugarcane’s sweetness. Its soundscape draws from archives related to the cultivation and commercial success of sugar. Using black (red) sugarcane as a reference to flesh, blood and bone, the performance interrogates commodification and intercedes on behalf of the plant’s sacred nature. Recognizing the many residents of Miami who come from sugarcane growing countries, bête noire invites the public to act as voluntary intercessors through acts of adornment. The public will be invited to thread handmade black cane beads onto a necklace as a nod to Ghanaian traditional beads adornment practices. My invented sugarcane beads visually reference vulcanite beads from Ghana (second photo) made of recycled vinyl and whose original form are these handmade coconut beads (third photo)