October 23, 2015

At the first ever Twelve Gates Arts Perform(art)ive Festival, a dynamic ensemble of international artists will perform works that utilize experimental media, installation, and dance to address themes that range widely from political history to gender identity, climate change, and memory. The festival seeks to celebrate South Asian diasporic culture and experience, as well as to provocatively explore the medium of performance itself. This free-to-the-public event will take place on Sunday, October 25 at 5:30pm in the URBN Annex Lobby (3401 Filbert Street).

A Philadelphia-based nonprofit that showcases international multidisciplinary arts, Twelve Gates presents work that addresses the sensibilities of a diasporic identity, especially the South Asian identity, and they seek to create and promote projects in the community that cross geographic and cultural boundaries. Featured artists at the October 25 Perform(art)ive Festival include:

Shahzia Sikander, an internationally-acclaimed Pakistani-born artist whose process-based work uses experimental media to examine the forces in contested cultural and political histories.

Bangladeshi-American artist Monica Jahan Bose, whose work addresses diverse topics ranging from gender and sexuality to climate change.

Indian artist, lawyer, and academic Sumit Baudh, whose work aims to explore thought, language, body, and performance concepts related to identity (e.g., Dalit, queer, gender).

Qasim Riza Shaheen, a UK-based visual artist and writer who works across performance, installation, film and photography, often with the audience as participants, and whose work explores various ways of sharing memories and enters the fragile architecture of the space between people.

The event will include a faculty panel discussion surrounding the contexts and implications of the works to spark both popular and academic dialogue about the genre of performance art. For more information, please contact Twelve Gates Arts at 215 253 8578 or info@twelvegatesarts.org.