Keioui Keijaun Thomas
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls
April 4, 2023
7:30pm
This show is sold out. Interested in joining the waitlist? To join, please check in with box office in-person 1 hour prior to showtime.
Keioui Keijaun Thomas debuts Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls, an immersive film and multimedia performance charting a post-apocalyptic geography. Thomas imagines a lush and verdant world inhabited by surviving “dolls”—trans femmes so flawless they are no longer considered real. Through forms of camouflage and metamorphosis, the artist reclaims what it means to be Black and queer in nature, forging new ways to exist in relation to the U.S. American landscape.
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls is presented in conjunction with with Wardrobe, an exhibition organized by Curatorial AIRspace Residents Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki.
Keioui Keijaun Thomas by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist.
About
Keioui Keijaun Thomas (b. 1989, USA) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts. Thomas has presented work at Creamcake, Skopje Pride, The Rhubarb Festival, Dweller, Fierce Festival, ANTI, Time-Based Arts Festival, Rapid Pulse, SPILL Festival, and Out of Site. Solo performances have been presented at Perrotin, PARTICIPANT INC, Knockdown Center, HOUSING, Performance Space New York, and Human Resources.
About the Curators
Laura Serejo Genes & Kiyoto Koseki work together as a curatorial partnership based in New York. They produce exhibitions and programs for specific sites, building upon existing systems to draw new social, material, and historical connections. Laura and Kiyoto each participated in SOMA Summer and the Newburgh Community Land Bank Artist-In-Vacancy initiative where they developed public programs in collaboration with local organizations and businesses. Past projects have been presented outside of art institutions and in venues including Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh; American Medium, New York; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge; Time Farm Gallery, Cambridge; Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, Mexico City; Bienal de las Fronteras, Instituto Tamaulipeco, Tamaulipas; Palácio Nacional de Belém, Lisbon; CAC, Torres Vedras; Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Aubervilliers; Etablissement d’en face, Brussels; NSK State-in-Time Pavillion, Venice; and Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo.
Funding
Come Hell or High Femmes is made possible with funding from The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.