This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Hair-braiding, Yodeling, and the Civil War

This month Recess is inviting Nontsikelelo Mutiti to create an installation about African hair-braiding in their storefront space. Mutiti, along with professionals hair stylists, will fill the space with archival images, texts, braiding instructions, combs, and even business cards. From this the artist will create a new installation of custom floor tiles, video, posters, etc., all using the repetition of weaving as a starting point. In short, expect to see a lot of patterning.

We’re really looking forward to this two-person exhibition with Elaine Lustig Cohen and Heman Chong. In this exhibition, Chong selects works from Lustig Cohen’s body of paintings that relate to her own work as a graphic designer of books and printed material. For her part, Lustig Cohen commissions Chong to create nine new paintings from “Cover Versions,” an ongoing series in which he creates fictional book jackets. This is particularly relevant to the gallery’s history, which was founded by Prem Krishnamurthy, a principal founder in the design firm Project Projects. Midway through the show, the exhibition will be rehung by SculptureCenter curator Ruba Katrib.

Have your work screened this Wednesday along with work by Omer Fast, Rainer Ganahl, Anna Jermolaewa, Shin il Kim, Christian Marclay, Fiona Tan, and Hiraki Sawa. Here’s the deal: They supply the beer and pizza, you bring the art!

Hindu mythology, blood, and transgender karate. After Our Bodies Meet: From Resistance to Potentiality, explores the history of queer feminist artists from around the globe. Artists include Zanele Muholi, who’s showing a series of digital collages about menstrual blood stains, and Heather Cassil, who used mixed martial arts to attack a 1,500-pound mountain of clay.

If you go to ICI, you might see some yodeling. Curator and writer Mark Beasley, currently with Performa, has organized a night devoted to experimental female singing that uses the “extended vocal technique” (this includes yodeling, metal growling, and vocal frying). It’ll be a little bit of a history talk, with a listening session thrown in for good measure.

It’s always worth it to check out the work of emerging artists. Roe Ethridge is curating The Yale MFA photography show this year, which is moving from its location in New Haven to the FLAG Art Foundation in New York. Artists include Erin Desmond, Awol Erizku, Genevieve Gaignard, Hannah Hummel, Fumikazu Ishino, Casey McGonagle, Tyler Moore, Hannah Price, Billie Stultz, and Evan Whale.

Dance and Process, the Kitchen’s longest running series, returns this year for just two nights. Performers Rebecca Patek, Kim Brandt, Alan Calpe, and Gillian Walsh came together for 10 weeks of intensive brainstorming—we’re looking forward to seeing how it’ll pay off. Though we don’t know a ton about all the performers, we can recommend Rebecca Patek; her performance “ineter(a)nal f/ear” at the Abrons Center was one of the most refreshing, no-bullshit performances we’ve seen all year.

Civil War reenactments in New York City are few and far between, but we’ve (kind of) found one. Courtesy the Artists, a performance duo made up of Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade (also members of 2014 Whitney Biennial favorites My Barbarian), will bring an afternoon of performances based on Civil War tunes. We expect some cheery song and dance, but with some political bite.

Collaborators including niv Acosta, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Matana Roberts, Kali Wilder and the New York Regiment United States Colored Troop Reenactors.

Donna Huanca’s work is like a high-gloss fashion editorial set inside an alien landscape; she’s been given a storefront at MoMA PS1 where, on Sundays only, models will walk around her set. Should be bizarre, and exciting.