Past
February 22, 23 & 24, 7 pm
SHARE VIA

In Tarps I Trust is a dance work by Laura Gutierrez inspired by themes of labor, specifically blue-collar jobs. The work explores the physical labor Gutierrez witnessed throughout her father’s career as a billboard painter, highlighting the materials that were ever present growing up in her household, such as tarps, ladders, and ratchet straps.  Using her father’s materials, Gutierrez focuses on their awkward and imposing nature, before gradually incorporating them into dance and movement phrases such that they become partners …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Premiered live on December 2, 3 pm
SHARE VIA

Stay tuned for future In Good Company programs. Watch the recording of Episode 1 below. Episode 1: Sebastien Boncy in Conversation with JD Pluecker In Good Company is a series of in-depth, online conversations made by and for artists. Adapting the format of a long-form television interview program to the web, IGC allows the time and space for deeper exploration into an artist’s life, work, and influences.  On Saturday, December 2, at 3 p.m., join us live for a virtual …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 29 - November 18, 2023
Saturdays, 11 am - 4 pm, or by appointment
SHARE VIA

On View Saturdays, 11 am – 4 pm through November 18, 2023 Locke Surls Center for Art and Nature @ Splendora Gardens SPECIAL CLOSING EVENT Richard (Dickie) Landry will perform live at 2 p.m. as part of the closing program of the A Gift from the Bower exhibition. This performance takes place in the Barn (James Surls’s former studio) at the Locke Surls Center for Art and Nature (LSCAN) in Splendora, TX. Before the concert, there will be a potluck lunch starting at …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Tuesday, November 7
Wednesday, November 8
Thursday, November 9, 2023
6:30 PM, Doors 6 PM
SHARE VIA

JOCELYN COTTENCIN AND EMMANUELLE HUYNH LANDS – Portrait of the City of Houston is a performance and film installation developed by French artists Jocelyn Cottencin and Emmanuelle Huynh. LANDS examines the past and present of Houston and its growth toward becoming the 4th largest city in the United States and invites audiences to reimagine the city’s possible future. The evening will feature a series of outdoor performances that Cottencin and Huynh choreographed with their Houston-based collaborators: Anthony Almendárez, Liyen Chong, Ayla …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

    In Gulfton, the “Ellis Island” of Houston, the public is invited to walk with Little Amal, the internationally-celebrated 12-foot-tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl, as part of her epic 6,000-mile journey across the United States. DiverseWorks and Brave Little Company, together with artists and organizers Afsaneh Aayani, Adam Castañeda, Eepi Chaad, Sherry Cheng, Hessam Dianpour, Bennie Flores Ansell, Apollo Chamber Players, WindSync, the Amaanah Refugee Services, Madres Del Parque, Connect Community, and Culture of Health – …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

  D.R.E.A.M. = A WAY TO AFRAM (DIFFRACTION + RESTORATION + ELECTROMAGNETIC ANALOGUE OF MASS = A WAY TO AFRAM) is a formulaic method of representing the expansion of the universe to reveal safe spaces for all Black beings to be in their bodies. Harris considers two dream spheres colliding: Black people resting in peace, merging with the sounds of the Earth’s dreams. Using sound, video, soft sculptures, and elements of performance, Harris will engage in AFRAMATIC actions and revival …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Friday, June 16 through
Monday June 19th
SHARE VIA

STACEY ALLEN, IN COLLABORATION WITH DANIELLE MASON AND KEDA SHARBER Aesthetic Inheritances is a project by performance artist Stacey Allen, created in collaboration with cultural preservationist and photographer Danielle Mason, and filmmaker Keda Sharber, that explores the preservation of Black culture and community. The project is created, in part, on the site of the Barrett family home at  Barrett Station, a Freedmen’s Settlement established in 1875 in Northeast Harris County. Friday, June 16 9am through Monday June 19th 11:59pm Aesthetic …

Continue to Full Post

Past
In progress, check back for updates
SHARE VIA

LAURA MORENO AND AZEL AGUSTIN / BEANS & RICE MEDIA ARTS The Kitchen Table Interviews is a community story-telling project by Laura Moreno and Azel Agustin of Beans & Rice Media Arts that focuses on their neighborhood of Westview Terrace in Houston. The project engages those who have grown up in or are longtime residents of the artists’ neighborhood of Westview Terrace, to share their personal stories and the impact of their recently changing surroundings, and begins to address the …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Saturday, December 17, 7 pm and
Sunday, December 18, 1:30 pm
SHARE VIA

co-presented by DiverseWorks and Circuit Network Little Central America, 1984 is a live performance written and performed by Elia Arce and Rubén Martínez that explores the origin story of the “Little Central Americas” established across the United States as a result of the civil wars of the 1980s. The performance brings together poetry, live music, and testimonials recreating the era when the conflicts in Guatemala and El Salvador displaced over one million people and spawned transnational solidarity through the Sanctuary …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 24 - November 5, 2022
Thu - Sat, 1 - 6 pm
SHARE VIA

Sites of Memory is an exhibition featuring newly commissioned and recent works by San Antonio-based artist Jenelle Esparza and Houston-based artist Verónica Gaona, who come together to explore the impermanent nature of land and its residual energy through the use of objects, land-based materials, and living and historical research. This exhibition builds on conversations between Esparza and Gaona as they work to further explore the impacts of migration, familial legacy, transnationality, migratory labor, and ideas related to rest. Sites of Memory …

Continue to Full Post

Past
May 4 - 6, 2022 / 5 - 8 pm
SHARE VIA

WILD LIGHT features unique suspended light works on view to the public May 4 – 6 (5 – 8 pm) and that are exclusively available for purchase through a silent auction at the  May 7 WILD LIGHT benefit dinner. ARTISTS Leticia Bajuyo, Susan Budge, John Calaway, Carlos Canul, Lina Dib, Rachel Gardner, Ronald L. Jones, Sharon Kopriva, Charmaine Locke, Jack Massing, Sherry Owens, Patrick Renner, Kaneem Smith, James Surls, and George Tobolowsky. All proceeds from the May 7 benefit support DiverseWorks’ production of A Gift from the Bower, a major outdoor multidisciplinary exhibition featuring the WILD …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 1 - April 23, 2022
Thursdays - Saturdays: 12 - 6 pm
SHARE VIA

  A KNOWLEDGE-BUILDING RESEARCH LAB Overlapping Territories is an interdisciplinary, experimental space for six artists to engage, discover, and reimagine what it means to be in relationship to the land. Curated by Ashley DeHoyos, this ongoing project begins with a Houston-centered approach as a way of understanding what conversations around land already exist within the city. Artists Liyen Chong, Catherine Davila-Martinez, Angel Lartigue, Matt Manalo, Jenah Maravilla, and Monica Villarreal will create multidisciplinary projects that reflect the breadth of the …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 21 & 22, 7 PM
SHARE VIA

TICKETS Womb, a project of Body as a Crossroads is a brave and intimate new dance work spearheaded by Los Angeles-based dance-maker, Marina Magalhães, at MATCH on April 21 and 22, 2022. Womb lives in the sacred meeting space of dualities, wherein it is possible to conjure spirit through flesh, find joy in grief, and create ritual out of rupture. The work was catalyzed by Magalhães’s personal experience of miscarriage mid-global pandemic and incorporates the storytelling of her fellow creators …

Continue to Full Post

Graphic image - title of exhibition, The Happening: Kinder HSPVA 50th Anniversary Alumni Exhibition, in white and red lettering on gray background, with black graphic abstractions representing the 3 HSPVA buildings over the schools 50 year history.
Past
October 28 - November 27, 2021
SHARE VIA

KINDER HSPVA 50TH ANNIVERSARY ALUMNI EXHIBITION DiverseWorks is pleased to present the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts 50th Anniversary Alumni Exhibition, The Happening, from October 28 – November 27, 2021. Formed in 1971, HSPVA represents the first attempt by any public high school in the nation to correlate an academic program with concentrated training in the arts. DiverseWorks hosted HSPVA’s twenty-fifth anniversary exhibition in 1997 and is proud to recognize the lasting impact of this unique …

Continue to Full Post

Photo: Digital transfer of archival image; Virginia Grise family photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
Past
November 20: 12 - 2 pm and 3 - 5 pm
November 21: 12 - 5 pm
SHARE VIA

Written by San Antonio-raised and Austin-based artist Virginia Grise with an installation by Los Angeles-based designer Tanya Orellana, rasgos asiáticos – sobremesa transforms the Train Shed next to the Silos at Sawyer Yards into a market of memories — a site-specific, multisensory experiential installation. Told through a series of inherited stories, fragmented memories, historical re-imaginings and recurring dreams, rasgos asiáticos explores the fluidity of borders and time, unearthing hidden histories in the confluence of China, Mexico, and the United States. …

Continue to Full Post

Past
October 15 - November 14, 2021
SHARE VIA

WAIL is a community grief ritual performance film conceived and organized by Candice D’Meza to honor the 95 individuals whose unmarked remains were unearthed in 2018 and who labored and died on a state-sanctioned convict leasing camp between 1877-1912 in Sugar Land, Texas.  Directed by Nate Edwards, in collaboration with D’Meza, WAIL is informed by the funerary traditions of Blacks in the Antebellum South, the Dagara of Burkina Faso, the Yoruba of Nigeria, and Haitian Vodou. The film explores questions …

Continue to Full Post

Past
February 19 - April 11, 2021
SHARE VIA

What does survival mean? Who do we create for and why? Visionary Futures is a series of projects that critically explore questions of the future through the personal lenses of queer, non-binary artists of color.  Thinking about the ways in which we survive and the legacies that we leave behind, the artists in Visionary Futures, Antonius-Tín Bui, Chandrika, Lovie Olivia, Preetika Rajgariah, S Rodriguez, Y2K, and the digital platform Time Zone, imagine possible trajectories through a variety of virtual performances and …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Wed, August 19, 6:30 pm
SHARE VIA

WITH JEFFERSON PINDER, VINOD HOPSON, MEKEVA MCNEIL, MICH S, AND ANTHONY SUBER In honor of the upcoming 103rd anniversary of the 1917 Camp Logan Uprising, DiverseWorks Curator Ashley DeHoyos reunites with Chicago-artist Jefferson Pinder and Houston artists Vinod Hopson, Mekeva McNeil, Mich S, and Anthony Suber for a conversation and second look at the 2019 presentation of Fire and Movement on the streets of Houston. Fire and Movement, 2019, 2 channel HD video, 9:24 (view full credits) Fire and Movement …

Continue to Full Post

still image depicting a close up of a hand, palm up, with a single small drop of liquid in the center of the palm.
Past
Online
September 23 - November 14, 2020

SHARE VIA

Sara Dittrich’s The Tender Interval creates a meditative experience that encourages the audience to slow down, engage in sensory perception, and find poetic refuge in moments of crisis. This newly commissioned series of multi-sensory experiences uses the body’s circulatory system as a means of fielding questions about close listening and ecological healing. Through her work, Dittrich engages in repetitive gestures, video, and sculpture to focus on the body’s circadian rhythms using biosensors as performative objects to track heartbeats and footsteps. …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Online
September 23 - November 14, 2020

Outdoor Screening & Installation
October 29, 6:30 - 9 pm
The WaterWorks in Buffalo Bayou Park
SHARE VIA

Yue Nakayama’s Nonplus is a new work that examines the idea of empathy and survival in relation to the current societal and environmental crisis. Nakayama’s work encourages us to reflect upon the interconnectedness of our belief systems, ideas of procreation and extinction, and empathy-related emotions connected to maternity. As environmental disasters and systemic failures of our society continue, how do we locate and process our feelings during the time of apocalypse? Her work navigates different issues surrounding the idea of …

Continue to Full Post

Image of Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin's video installation
Past
As of March 16, 2020, 50 States: Louisiana is closed until further notice due to the ongoing public health emergency.

February 29 - April 18, 2020

SHARE VIA

Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin’s new large-scale, multimedia exhibition, 50 States: Louisiana, unearths a 1720s history of a same-sex couple involved in the burgeoning indigo trade in colonial Louisiana. The work uniquely connects this tale to a series of gay Mardi Gras Balls that were held at the New Orleans Longshoremen’s Union Hall in the 1960s. Through video, sculpture, and sound, the installation envelops audiences in a 300-year span of queer life along the Mississippi River. As of March 16, 50 …

Continue to Full Post

All the Devils are Here promo photo by Lynn Lane
Past
Friday, May 14 (8 pm) and Saturday, May 15 (5 pm)
SHARE VIA

AN IMMERSIVE LIVESTREAM PERFORMANCE Open Dance Project and DiverseWorks co-present the long-awaited premiere of All the Devils Are Here: A Tempest in the Galapagos. The hour-long immersive production choreographed by Annie Arnoult in collaboration with 11 ODP performers will be livestreamed from MATCH Theaters on May 14 & 15, 2021.  Filmmakers will simulate the immersive experience of the production through the use of a mobile (gimbal mount) camera for the livestream production that features live music performed and composed by Kirk Suddreath. Shakespeare’s The Tempest collides with the true …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Sunday, October 20, 4 - 8 pm (doors at 4, performances begin at 4:30)
SHARE VIA

Bayou City Be All is a one-of-a-kind evening of performance, fashion, and music beyond the Gender Binary. This community-driven project surveys queer and gender non-conforming traditions across Houston. Bayou City Be All celebrates the music, culture, and art of LGBTQIA+ Gender Non-Conforming, Genderqueer, and Non-Binary creatives through live performance, fashion, and music. This KiKi* function features the works of six performance artists and two collectives: Black TM, Tania Breton, Junior Fernandez, iPOCA Collective, Jazmin Jett, Angel Lartigue, Isaac Reyes, and Y2K, selected from …

Continue to Full Post

Alief Art House promotion image
Past
October - December 2019


SHARE VIA

Alief has been at the forefront of diversity in Houston. It is known as The International District and is considered a window into what Houston is becoming. Alief Art House, created as part of artist Matt Manalo’s DiverseWorks Project Freeway Fellowship, is a hub for creativity that highlights the cultural richness of the multiple communities in Alief. Alief Art House is a shipping container on the grounds of the Alief Community Garden at the Alief SPARK Park and Nature Center …

Continue to Full Post

Letters & Lives promotion image
Past
Sundays, October 27, 2019 - January 12, 2020, 3 - 5 pm; Community Celebration & Reading: January 26, 3 - 6 pm (no workshops Dec. 22, 29, and Jan. 5)
SHARE VIA

A WRITING WORKSHOP SERIES DOCUMENTING LIFE IN AND AROUND LOCKWOOD & LYONS A multigenerational writing workshop series and conversation space centering the experiences of current and past residents of Kashmere Gardens, Trinity/Houston Gardens, and Fifth Ward, Letters & Lives encourages participants to dive into memories, make observations, and share their insights and wisdom about these intertwined neighborhoods through discussion and narrative writing.  Letters & Lives is a pilot project created as part of Curry’s DiverseWorks Project Freeway Fellowship. Curry created …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

Presented by DiverseWorks, in collaboration with Blaffer Art Museum and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. On October 24th, 1871, 20 Chinese men were tortured and hanged in downtown LA. This mass lynching—one of the largest in U.S. history—took place on Calle de los Negros, named for its original inhabitants: dark-skinned Californios of indigenous, African, and Spanish blood. This coincidence of space insists: the American story, of migration …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Thursday, November 7, 6 pm
SHARE VIA

On November 7, 2019, in advance of the Spring 2020 presentation of their new commissioned work, 50 States: Louisiana, the artists Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin will present Cabin Boy Blue, a performance lecture at the Houston Public Library-Julia B. Ideson Building in Downtown Houston. Through the unique format of an interdisciplinary lecture, the artists will reveal their research to date on the early histories of queer life along the Mississippi River. 50 States: Louisiana is the sixth part of a long-term …

Continue to Full Post

Past
June 28, 8:30 pm
SHARE VIA

In conjunction with the opening of Qollective: Tread Loudly, DiverseWorks is excited to announce the debut of Qollective’s first collaborative performance work, I’m Ever So Pissed. The performance will incorporate elements of contemporary dance, sound art, and drag. Featured performers from Qollective include Aveda Adara (aka Post Modern Sleaze), Frank Hernandez (aka Barbara Coa), and Philip Karjeker. Please join us on the evening of June 28, 2019, at 8:30 PM. Doors open for the Tread Loudly exhibition at 7:30 PM. …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

Fire and Movement is a newly commissioned public performance by interdisciplinary Chicago-based artist Jefferson Pinder. The artist and a trained group of performers will retrace the route and narrative of the 1917 Camp Logan Uprising (also known as the “Houston Riot” or “Camp Logan Mutiny”), one of Houston’s most complicated and often-misrepresented historical events. The uprising saw African American soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry revolt and attempt to march on the city after experiencing …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

AWILDA RODRÍGUEZ LORA SUSTENTO: from La Performera to La Mujer Maravilla Stories, movements, and songs are strategies used by La Performera to invite the audience to reflect on the concept of sustento (sustenance) as a complex and vital idea for survival in creative and everyday practices. ABOUT THE PROJECT SUSTENTO: from La Performera to La Mujer Maravilla is a lecture-performance by the transdisciplinary artist, Awilda Rodríguez Lora, also known as “La Performera.” Stories, movements, and songs are strategies used by La Performera to …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 21 - November 3, 2018

Gallery Hours:
Thu - Sat, 12 - 8 pm
SHARE VIA

Lily Cox-Richard’s new sculpture installation inventively challenges social and material hierarchies related to labor, craft, and natural and man-made environments. Inspired by the concept of the berm, a term that refers to an artificially raised bank or ridge that may serve as a fortification line or a separation barrier, Cox-Richard’s new sculptures use reclaimed materials, crafted objects, and the space around them to push up against institutional frameworks and existing architecture to explore modes of viewing, perspective, and accessibility. Within the installation, concrete aggregates …

Continue to Full Post

Autumn Knight
Past
Fri, Nov 2 & Sat, Nov 3 (8 pm)
SHARE VIA

Get Tickets Interdisciplinary artist Autumn Knight presents a new performance project, M _ _ _ ER. Through a combination of images, movements, and language, Knight creates sensory and emotional experiences and environments. Her work employs visual mapping, character improvisation, social engagement, visual art, and takes on a broad range of subjects including interiority, dissonance, ritual, and humor. Autumn Knight: M_ _ _ ER is a National Performance Network/Visual Artist Network (NPN/VAN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by DiverseWorks, On the …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 31, 2019 (7 pm)
SHARE VIA

Co-presented by DiverseWorks and the Rothko Chapel, Chicago-based company, The Seldoms, will share Dancing on Thin Ice, an excerpt of Floe — a new dance theater work-in-progress that explores madness, delusion, oil extraction, the vanishing of Arctic ice, and rising sea levels. Floe embodies the fragmentation of our global conversation on climate change as it veers from anti-science conspiracy theories to the very real impacts of global warming on communities from the Gulf Coast to the Arctic Circle.  The performance is part of a week-long research …

Continue to Full Post

Past
February 15, 2019 (8 pm) and February 16, 2019 (2 pm & 8 pm)
SHARE VIA

  A filmic portrait about two people, living in a ghost town. A story about solitude and survival, the results of a failed atomic experiment. Get Tickets BERLIN’s Zvizdal is a cinematic play that follows the day-to-day existence of an elderly couple living in the abandoned Chernobyl exclusion zone. To create the work, the Belgium-based collective, BERLIN, traveled to the village of Zvizdal to document how the couple continues to live, work, and survive 30 years after the nuclear disaster of 1986. The …

Continue to Full Post

Past
February 21 - April 14, 2019
SHARE VIA

Collective Presence is a hub for creative and cultural activity to address topics related to social, political, and environmental issues of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Part exhibition, part curatorial concept, and part experiment, this project proposes the exhibition space as a format for a collective call and response to the current trends of futurist and decolonization practices. Collective Presence brings together multiple perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches to creative leadership and critical inquiry. Through a series of micro-residencies, workshops, and events, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
June - August 2018
SHARE VIA

As an initial venture into a new program, from June-August 2018, DiverseWorks will engage in conversations and visits to help us to identify community partners and artists in the Alief area of Houston. Team Members will work to establish relationships with artists, community members, and organizations working in this neighborhood and find ways for potential future collaborations. We are particularly interested in creating platforms that will question the familiar and expose the unfamiliar, and provide pathways for artists to connect across …

Continue to Full Post

Past
March 29 & 30, 8 pm
SHARE VIA

PRESENTED BY THE DIVERSEWORKS ARTIST ADVISORY BOARD 12 Minutes. The maximum amount of time for a perfect hard-boiled egg. And the maximum amount of time given to each performer. 12 Minutes Max! Join the DW Artist Advisory Board and friends for two evenings of new, experimental, and unusual performances, each 12 minutes or less. With a different line-up each night, this fast-paced, high-energy event features performance art, dance, music, sound, spoken word, and more. Performances by: THURSDAY, MARCH 29 Anisa …

Continue to Full Post

Past
AUCTION & PARTY:
Thursday, May 17, 7 pm

EXHIBITION:
Saturday, May 12, 12 - 8 pm
Sunday, May 13, 12 - 6 pm
Wednesday, May 16, 12 - 6pm
Friday, May 18, 12 - 6 pm
Saturday, May 19, 12 - 6 pm
SHARE VIA

PURCHASE TICKETS EXHIBITION, AUCTION & PARTY DOWNLOAD AUCTION CATALOG (PDF) DiverseWorks presents Art • Design • Life —an exhibition, auction and party benefiting DiverseWorks’ exhibitions, performances, and programs. Join us as we bring together Houston’s vibrant art, architecture, and design communities for a celebration of the arts in our everyday lives. This special fundraising event features music, culinary delights, and a silent auction of one-of-a-kind experiences including curated trips and dinners, original artwork by national and international artists, and design objects by …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Thursday, April 12: 6 pm
Friday, April 13: 9 pm
Saturday, April 14: 10 am & 5 pm
Sunday, April 15: 12 pm & 3 pm
SHARE VIA

PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH COUNTERCURRENT AND FIESTA MART A new site-specific work by contemporary Houston and New York-based choreographer Laura Gutierrez, Center Aisle Blues stems from childhood memories of Fiesta Mart to more recent political realizations. Gutierrez choreographs movement inspired by the aisles and atmosphere of a local Fiesta, playing on the aesthetics of the supermarket, the ritualistic experience of grocery shopping, and the convergence of diverse communities in the aisles. Responding directly to the people and objects around her, Gutierrez crafts …

Continue to Full Post

Keliy Anderson-Staley, Dulce, 2009, tintype
Past
Saturday, January 13 (12 - 6 pm) and Sunday, January 14 (1 - 4 pm)
SHARE VIA

TINTYPE PHOTO STUDIO Portrait photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley, known nationally for her work using the 19th-century wet-plate collodion tintype process, will make portraits of members of the Midtown Houston community using a tintype photo booth. Visitors can observe this historic photographic process and sit for a portrait. The event is part of Anderson-Staley’s public art project, Shelter in Place, that will be installed in a public space in late 2018.  ABOUT KELIY ANDERSON-STALEY Keliy Anderson-Staley was raised off the grid in Maine, studied photography in New York …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Sun, Oct 29, 3 - 7 pm
SHARE VIA

Join DiverseWorks and choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto on Sunday, October 29th for an evening of food, art and performance centered on the subject of the detour and other influences of Japanese history and culture. This exclusive event includes tickets to the Sunday performance of Yamamoto’s new dance work, Direct Path to Detour, and a cocktail reception and hot pot dinner with the artist and performers, prepared by Chef Jean Philippe Gaston at Izakaya restaurant in Midtown Houston. CLICK TO PURCHASE TICKETS …

Continue to Full Post

Past
October 27 - 29, 2017
SHARE VIA

Direct Path to Detour is a new dance work by Portland-based choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto. Grounded in the idea that a sense of who we are is rooted in our embodied experiences, this dance evokes mental and physical states at the intersection of value systems, social pressures, expectations, and personal experiences of four dancers. Yamamoto’s Direct Path to Detour collaborators – performers, musician, and dramaturge – each have an intimate relationship with bridging multiple societies by birth, residence, upbringing and/or religion. …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 23 - November 18, 2017
SHARE VIA

Lines Drawn explores how artists reimagine, disrupt and question received notions of borders and boundaries. By addressing issues of immigration, nationalism, equity, and human rights through their work, the artists encourage us to contemplate the many barriers in our own lives as social constructions of power. Set within the current context of national and global environmental, political and social crises, Lines Drawn also offers a forum to consider how the complexities and controversies of our time can be addressed through …

Continue to Full Post

Past
May 13 - July 22, 2017
SHARE VIA

REGINA AGU, RUBY ONYINYECHI AMANZE, WURA-NATASHA OGUNJI Performance, drawing, and writing are each about mark making. The bodily gesture in a performance carries with it a historical trace and movement knowledge, the linear gestures of drawing leave physical marks on a surface, and writing can be thought of as a form of drawing with language. into the midst of things brings together three artists—Regina Agu, ruby onyinyechi amanze, and Wura-Natasha Ogunji—who are truly invested in mark making in all of its …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Preview: April 27, 6 - 8 pm Performance/Auction: April 28, Doors at 7 pm; Auction at 8 pm
SHARE VIA

With a global art market valued at $63.8 billion and artists receiving the lowest amount of their earned income from the market…it’s time to reinvent the art auction! House of Wahala–meaning trouble in Nigerian pidgin–flips the script. Artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji steps in as auctioneer and audio guru Emeka Ogboh provides the evening’s soundtrack. All works come from the primary market–that is directly from artists–to you. Featuring work from over twenty-five international and Texas-based artists, House of Wahala infuses the art …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Saturday, March 11, 6 pm
SHARE VIA

A COLLABORATIVE SOUND PERFORMANCE ORGANIZED BY SANDY EWEN AND REBECCA NOVAK Listen Around Your Way is a collaborative sound performance that will use the architecture of the MATCH building as a site and stage for a series of solo and collective sounds.  Performers will be stationed in multiple locations around the outdoor breezeway that connects the north and south wings of the building, with some of them traveling along a looped pathway marked by brightly colored tape. The performers will play and sing …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 21 - March 18, 2017
SHARE VIA

Only in Your Way is the first collaborative two-person exhibition between New York-based artists Kate Gilmore and Heather Rowe. The exhibition includes newly commissioned, site-specific sculptural works, installation, and a live durational performance. Only in Your Way features distinct new works by each artist, conceived to be in conversation with each other utilizing the gallery space and considering ideas about sculptural objects and architecture in relation to the female body. Gilmore, a performance, video, and installation-based artist, explores issues related to identity, gender, power, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
November 4 & 5, 2016, 8 pm
SHARE VIA

12 Minutes Max! and the DiverseWorks Artist Advisory Board sock it to you with two evenings of new and experimental performances, none of which last longer than the titular 12 minutes. The results are fast-paced, high-energy events featuring performance art, dance, experimental sound, comedy, spoken word and much, much more! Each evening features a unique line-up of performances. Free, but advance tickets are required and may be reserved online. Friday, November 4, 8 pm: Abijan Johnson Justin Jones & Stalina Villareal …

Continue to Full Post

Past
November 11 & 12, 2016, 8 pm
SHARE VIA

In Meg Wolfe’s new work New Faithful Disco, a trio of dancers—taisha paggett, Marbles Jumbo Radio, and Wolfe—perform a queer-love power-performance wrought with awkwardness and contradictions. Propelled by nature sounds and disco rhythms, bodies are the conduit: the site of intersections where dances are generated, transferred, translated, and recycled in an attempt to remix revolution. Disco opens up time, triggers fading histories, and provides a backdrop that frames who we are, now. “Meg Wolfe is remarkable…unfettered by physical constraints” – LA …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 17 - November 19, 2016
SHARE VIA

Conceptual artist Pablo Helguera combines performance, visual art, community outreach and political activism to examine the social and cultural function of conventional teaching and memory systems. For his exhibition at DiverseWorks, Helguera uses fables to examine forms of visual and linguistic communication (or miscommunication) and understanding — particularly between children and adults and the empowered vs. the marginalized. New installation and video work, as well as a conceptual sculpture and a series of collages titled, Arlington Heights, are included in his …

Continue to Full Post

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Pablo Helguera: The Fable Is to Be Retold, this live performance event features Helguera and Houston-area musicians and dancers and is inspired by childhood fables and fairytales. The recital includes adaptations of the story of “The Mock Turtle” from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), “The Swan” from Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals (1886), and Scott Joplin’s Solace (Mexican Serenade) (1909). Performing artists include Yvonne Chen (piano), Harrison Guy (dance), Tomas Jonsson (piano), Candace Rattliff (dance), Yvonne Smith …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Thursday, September 29 - Sunday, October 2
SHARE VIA

DiverseWorks presents Tiny Art Salon, a series of talks and live performances by Houston-area artists in the DW booth at the 2016 Texas Contemporary art fair. Tiny Art Salon proposes an alternative to the standard art fair booth by providing a platform for artists to present short talks, host conversations, and perform unique works over the course of the four-day fair. Schedule of Events Friday, Sept 30, 3 – 4 pm John Pluecker Reading from his new book of poetry and images, Ford Over, Pluecker …

Continue to Full Post

Sheila Pepe’s exhibition at DiverseWorks is a commissioned installation that serves as an open meeting space and platform for several events, including a video installation by current MFAH Core Fellow Sondra Perry. With an interest in carving out space within solo exhibitions for young artists, Pepe invited Perry, working in video and performance, to respond to her augmented reinstallation of Put me down Gently, 2015. Each artist worked autonomously, yet their projects were hinged by shared resources, the color blue and an investment in improvisation within …

Continue to Full Post

Sondra Perry I'm Afraid I Can't Do That Video Still
Past
Friday, June 17, 7 pm
SHARE VIA

A PERFORMANCE BY SONDRA PERRY In episode 17, Season 27 of The Simpsons, after Mr. Burns’s continued refusal to acknowledge the hard work and affection of Smithers, his right-hand man, Homer throws a party inviting the gay men of Springfield in hopes of finding Smithers a boyfriend. A banner welcoming the guests reads ‘A Party With No Agenda.’ In this directly indirect wink and a nudge of a performance, Perry and the audience will work through how ideology, didacticism, and …

Continue to Full Post

WE Are PAPER TOWEL is Sheila Pepe’s first-ever staged performance and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition SHEILA PEPE invites SONDRA PERRY — Put me down Gently: A Cooler Place + I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That, on view at DiverseWorks June 11 – August 6, 2016. Spinning out from her normative role as lecturer, artist talk-er and teacher, Pepe will perform a building. Think of it as an architectural drawing of/for culture, constructed with parts simultaneously personal and …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 8 pm
SHARE VIA

CounterCurrent 16 opening night event presented in partnership with the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts What kind of dance can you make on a 4′ x 4′ stage? Ten choreographers take on the challenge, creating ten short dances on one very small stage, a raised cube in a large white room, with the audience surrounding it like a boxing ring. With each dance, the performers take the stage under the glare of lights and anticipation …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

taisha paggett and WXPT in collaboration with Ashley Hunt and Kim Zumpfe The School for the Movement of the Technicolor People is a large-scale installation and performance platform by Los Angeles-based artist taisha paggett and WXPT in collaboration with Ashley Hunt and Kim Zumpfe. The DiverseWorks gallery will be set up as a rehearsal studio, photo shoot and experimental classroom, where The School for the Movement of the Technicolor People will be researching their ongoing question, “What is a Black …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 15 - March 19, 2016
SHARE VIA

  What Shall We Do Next? is a group exhibition that examines how technology and advertising have shifted our relationships to our physical bodies, shaping of subjectivity, and notions of the real. The exhibition is comprised of a variety of works across mediums – including drawings, paintings, sculpture, video animations, and performance – that all acknowledge and incorporate the effects of technology, commerce, and advertising. The artists brought together in What Shall We Do Next? — Danielle Dean, Kristin Lucas, Julien Prévieux, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Saturday, March 12, 7:30 pm; Sunday, March 13, 4 pm & 7:30 pm
SHARE VIA

What Shall We Do Next? is a live performance piece conceived by French artist Julien Prévieux and performed by a cast of Houston and Portland-based dancers (Laura Gutierrez, Allie Hankins, Jasmine Hearn, and Alisa Mittin). For more than ten years, Prévieux has been researching and collecting gestures prescribed by technology (such as the pinch and the swipe). He has appropriated these movements and removed them from their utilitarian function to create an abstract choreographic work that conveys a reflection upon …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Saturday, November 14, 3 pm
SHARE VIA

DiverseWorks and Rice Public Art are collaborating to present Astrology Orchestra on Saturday, November 14 at the James Turrell Twilight Epiphany Skyspace on the Rice University campus. Astrology Orchestra is an ongoing symphonic performance project. Each instrument represents a planetary position and maps the artist’s astrological birth chart as seen from the perspective of each planet. The chart is translated into the strings of handmade instruments that are tuned accordingly. Echoing Turrell’s pyramidal structure, for the live performance in Houston, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 11 - November 14, 2015
SHARE VIA

Los Angeles-based artist Katie Grinnan’s sculpture, photography, sound, and video works investigate the relationship between visual and cognitive experience. Nocturnal Hologram features three recent large-scale sculptural installations that explore the productive space of the dream state and our attempts to understand how thought patterns are created and can be made physically manifest. This exhibition is the first solo presentation of Grinnan’s work in Texas. about katie grinnan Katie Grinnan (b.1970, Richmond, VA; lives and works in Los Angeles) received her BFA …

Continue to Full Post

Past
June 27 - August 15, 2015
SHARE VIA

A Group Exhibition Featuring Members of the DiverseWorks Artist Board The DiverseWorks Artist Board provides integral programmatic input and helps to develop policies around the artistic direction of the organization. The Artist Board was purposefully created at the founding of the organization to ensure that artists remain central to DiverseWorks mission. This exhibition takes its title from the word that designates a group of owls. Species of animals travel in various groups: a dazzle of zebras, a murder of crows, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
May 14 - June 13, 2015
SHARE VIA

Luck of the Draw, DiverseWorks’ annual fundraiser features more than 200 original works of art created by artists from across the country, each available for $100 each. More info… Luck of the Draw 2015 Participating Artists Shanon Adams Regina Agu Isela Aguirre Chris Akin Sterling Allen Daniel Anguilu Claire Ankenman Andis Applewhite The Art Guys David Aylsworth Lisa Baldin Nick Barbee Heather Bause Jill Bedgood Anthea Behm Molly Block Pablo Bobbio Matthew Bourbon Julia Brown Hiyme Brummett Richie Budd Adam Burkett …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 24, 7:30 pm (doors at 7pm)

April 25, 4:00 pm
SHARE VIA

Duet Love performs love, lust and charged energy. Portland choreographer Tahni Holt’s latest work presents coupled bodies performing gendered states around the romantic premise of the “duet.” Holt and her artistic team draw from iconic photographs of hetero couples to drive this inquiry into how bodies perform gender. If masculine and feminine are forces and factors, how do markers of gender and race inflect the movement, emotion and decisions of dancing bodies and how do we as audience read them? …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 17 & 18, 2015, 8 pm (74 minutes)
SHARE VIA

Steeped in a childhood of grassroots organizing and pitched campaigns, multidisciplinary artist Dean Moss draws from an intimate and varied history with activism to create johnbrown—a dark, wry meditation on the legacy of the white 19th-century abolitionist, as well as the racial, gender, and generational processes at play in the inquiry. The result of three years of research, johnbrown layers live choreography and text with video performances of an original script by Thomas Bradshaw and a score by Stephen Vitiello. Moss also incorporates a …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 24, 7 pm
SHARE VIA

Artists Chelsea Knight and Autumn Knight present Latencies: a performance that is part lecture, part dinner, and part psychology session. Co-presented by DiverseWorks and Project Row Houses at Eldorado Ballroom, 2310 Elgin. We want to tell you our two stories: latent and manifest*. This is our hysterical story (hysterical in the Freudian sense), the story of our alliance, our fraudulence, our transgression, our passive aggression, our competition, our sexuality (or rather hypersexuality), and our relation to the world, as women. How we relate …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 21 - March 7, 2015
SHARE VIA

Based in New York, German-born artist Oliver Herring is known internationally for his use of experimental techniques as a means to better understand human nature, individual behavior, and interpersonal dynamics.  His work has taken a variety of forms, but since 1998 has focused primarily on brief yet intensive collaborative encounters with volunteer participants. Herring directs and documents these open-ended performances, usually involving a series of actions, which take place in different environments–including gallery or museum spaces, private homes, municipal buildings, and educational facilities—and feature groups …

Continue to Full Post

SHARE VIA

From December 3 – 20, 2014, during gallery hours DiverseWorks will screen ALTERNATE ENDINGS and short films by Chelsea Knight and Mark Tribe. Alternate Endings ALTERNATE ENDINGS highlights the diverse voices of seven artists/collectives that use video to bring together charged moments and memories from their personal perspective amidst the public history of HIV/AIDS. Featuring videos by Rhys Ernst, Glen Fogel, Lyle Ashton Harris, Hi Tiger, Tom Kalin, My Barbarian, and Julie Tolentino. The short videos in ALTERNATE ENDINGS use a mix of found footage, live performance, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
November 22, 2014 - January 10, 2015
SHARE VIA

Posse Comitatus is a three-year collaborative project that examines the sociocultural dynamics of paramilitary groups and the representation of their political ideologies through performative gestures and movement. The title refers to a loose network of citizen militias whose actions and ideologies are influenced by the post-Reconstruction Posse Comitatus Act that limited the domestic use of federal military forces, and who espouse survivalist methods as a means to defend individual liberty. In 2012, Knight and Tribe made contact with an upstate New York …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 6 - October 25, 2014
SHARE VIA

Miami-based artist Pepe Mar creates brightly colored and fantastical sculptures that capture his flamboyant spirit and reflect an eclectic fusion of cultures. Mar, who was born in Mexico and raised in border towns, draws on disparate spheres of influence by combining references to ethnographic objects with crafting, fashion, and nightclub life in his handcrafted works. Frequently taking the form of elaborate shadow boxes or wunderkabinetts, Mar’s works display handmade figurines and small sculptures cobbled together from thrift store finds, craft materials, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Saturday, June 28 - August 9, 2014
SHARE VIA

SELECTED PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE IDEA FUND CO-ORGANIZED BY DIVERSEWORKS, AURORA PICTURE SHOW, AND PROJECT ROW HOUSES Six of one, half a dozen of the either features a selection of Idea Fund supported projects. The Idea Fund is a re-granting program established by The Andy Warhol Foundation and administered by a partnership of DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses. Since its inception in 2008, The Idea Fund has supported the creation of 60 Texas-based projects (ten annually) that exemplify interventionist, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
July 26 - August 9, 2014
SHARE VIA

a community art project They say a picture is worth a thousand words…show the world what you see and be the voice for those who can’t speak. Building on DiverseWorks’ long history of social activism through art, Barrio Dogs, Box 13, and DiverseWorks have teamed up to present No One’s Dog, a community-based project that uses art to bring attention to Houston’s animal overpopulation crisis. The project involves a photography exhibition at DiverseWorks (July 26 – August 9, 2014), a community awareness event at Box 13 ArtSpace (August …

Continue to Full Post

Past
March 15 - May 3, 2014
SHARE VIA

DiverseWorks has commissioned Los Angeles-based artist Wu Tsang to create a multi-media installation and performance that inhabits a space between fiction and documentary. Tsang is an award-winning filmmaker and performer, who explores the relationship between self, identity, and the narratives that construct them. This new project takes as a point of departure the question of underground/sub-cultures within a trans-national context. Moved by the Motion features a 2-channel film installation that explores the sensorial potential of pictures in relation to narrative. Working …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Saturday, April 12, 9 - 10 pm
SHARE VIA

CounterCurrent 14 Performance Filmmaker, producer, and acclaimed visual artist Wu Tsang animates his installation at DiverseWorks with a one-time-only live performance, featuring the performer boychild. Moved by the Motion (featuring boychild) explores the sensorial potential of pictures in relation to cinematic narrative. Working in a tradition of artist-filmmakers, Tsang looks at the role that fantasy plays in representing social movements. Evoking “the underground” as a site of cultural resistance, he considers how these constructs have been transformed by the internet …

Continue to Full Post

Past
May 2 & 3, 7:30 pm
SHARE VIA

Purchase Tickets Dance, words, and scrap wood are the raw materials for One with Others, an examination of who we become due to the choices we make — or that others make for us. Crude, handmade wooden appendages — part prop, part prosthetic, part costume —stand alongside text and choreography to form a trio of jerry-rigged tools that dismantle and cobble back together affinities, art, and what it means to be seen, handled, used, and needed. I think often of [Karen Sherman] as a …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Fundraiser: Thursday, May 15

Exhibition: May 16 - June 14
SHARE VIA

Luck of the Draw 2014 Exhibition and Sale continue through June 14 At DiverseWorks’ most anticipated party and fundraiser, Luck of the Draw, attendees try their luck at winning original artworks from over 300 local, national, and international artists made specifically for DiverseWorks! This event is perfect for both the experienced and beginning collector, providing an opportunity to discover new artists and add unique works to your collection.  

Past
Friday, February 21, Noon
SHARE VIA

Bonnie Barnett returns to the downtown Houston tunnels for Another Under Houston Humming What is a HUM? Bonnie Barnett created the HUM in 1981, with a small, acoustic vocal event in San Francisco. Since then, she has staged dozens of HUMs across the United States, including one in the downtown Houston tunnels for the New Music America Festival in 1986. A short verbal score, or list of instructions, outlines the process of breathing, humming and singing, all in a harmonious …

Continue to Full Post

Past
Thursday, February 20, 7 pm
SHARE VIA

In conjunction with the exhibition SonicWorks, DiverseWorks, Rice Public Art, and the Shepherd School of Music collaborate to present Bonnie Barnett’s Skyspace HUM in the Suzanne Deal Booth Centennial Pavilion, James Turrell’s Twilight Epiphany Skyspace, located adjacent to the Shepherd School of Music on the Rice University Campus. Skyspace HUM will begin at 7 pm.  No reservations are needed to participate in the HUM. *Please note that due to technical difficulties the Skyspace will not have a regularly scheduled sunset light sequence. Map and …

Continue to Full Post

Presented by Nameless Sound and DiverseWorks In conjunction with the exhibition SonicWorks, Nameless Sound and DiverseWorks will partner to present a marathon of back-to-back performances by area musicians of scores by Pauline Oliveros: composer, performer, humanitarian, and important pioneer in the field of American experimental music. Acclaimed internationally, for more than four decades she has explored sound, forging new ground for herself and others. Oliveros was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Anthology, Meditations has an indeterminate ending time, by …

Continue to Full Post

Past
December 6 & 7, 2013, 7 pm
SHARE VIA

DiverseWorks is bringing Faifai, the Tokyo-based contemporary theater group, to Houston on their first US tour. Combining pop visuals, graffiti-like body movements, and polyphonic soundscapes, Anton, Neko, Kuri follows the alternatingly humorous and poignant travails of a stray cat.  Faifai uses unconventional performance techniques – including cutting up, sampling and transforming performers’ words into music, and inviting audience intervention – in order to blend disciplines, generate new realities, and reveal the creative process. About Faifai Faifai is a Tokyo-based theater company established …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 11 - March 1, 2014
SHARE VIA

SonicWorks is a multi-platform exhibition that explores the expanding field of experimental sound art and practice. Focusing on contemporary artists who utilize a variety of materials from the conventional to the absurd, SonicWorks features discrete sound works, sculptural intervention, multi-media installations, and live performances. In addition to surveying current sound works, the exhibition also considers how DiverseWorks, an early and active commissioner of sonic ideas, has influenced the creation and reception of experimental sound in Houston and the region. The exhibition has two …

Continue to Full Post

Past
November 2 – December 28, 2013
SHARE VIA

UK-based artists Heather and Ivan Morison have been commissioned by DiverseWorks to create their first major institutional project in the United States.  Using social personae to investigate the construction of self, the Morisons engage with materials, histories, sites and processes.  Their work takes various forms and has included film, sculpture and public art, theatrical and musical performances, literature, and community engagement. For DiverseWorks, the Morisons have developed an expansive narrative that includes a gallery exhibition and mobile public performances. Slyk …

Continue to Full Post

Past
September 7 - October 12, 2013
SHARE VIA

DiverseWorks was born out of urgency, founded in 1982 by a group of artists who sought a gathering space for presenting experimental contemporary work that had no other outlet in Houston. Consistently on the forefront of multidisciplinary practice, DiverseWorks soon became the primary place in Houston to see and experience challenging and provocative art in all its forms, much of it engaged with pressing political, social, and cultural issues. It was against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and Culture …

Continue to Full Post

Past
June 29 – August 17, 2013
SHARE VIA

An exhibition featuring works by members of the DiverseWorks Artist Board L’esprit de l’escalier, a French pun translated idiomatically as “staircase wit,” refers to the inevitable situation of finding oneself thinking of the perfect comeback to an argument too late. The retort, when removed from the context of its original instigation, has a tendency to lose its potency leading to incidences of regret and remorse. Through a wide variety of artistic strategies, the DiverseWorks Artist Board grapples with how words, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 26 & 27, 2013
8 pm
(60 minutes / no intermission)
SHARE VIA

With Miriam, the renowned choregrapher and dancer Nora Chipaumire creates her first character-driven work — a deeply personal dance-theater performance that reverberates with tensions: between public expectations and private desires, between objectification and power, and between darkness and light.  Miriam invites the audience into an immersive experience of being an outsider, requiring the engagement of all five senses. The inspiration for Miriam springs from the cultural and political milieu of Chipaumire’s southern African girlhood, her self-exile to the United States, and her self-discovery as an …

Continue to Full Post

Past
April 6 – May 18, 2013
SHARE VIA

Liz Magic Laser’s live performances and videos often intervene in public spaces such as banks and movie theaters, and have involved collaborations with actors, dancers, surgeons, market research analysts, and motorcycle gang members. Tell Me What You Want To Hear is a video installation that explores story-telling methods and interview techniques employed by politicians and newsmakers to elicit public support. Utilizing the format of a political talk show, Tell Me What You What To Hear poses a dialogue between political experts, the television media, …

Continue to Full Post

Past
January 19 - March 16, 2013
SHARE VIA

an interactive, peformative installation combining art, music, dance and language Tony Feher is known for creating strikingly beautiful sculptures out of seemingly mundane objects.  For this experiment, DiverseWorks invited the artist to consider how his sculptural work might inform, relate to, or translate into live performance – a discipline largely unexplored by Feher to date.  Encompassing the main gallery space, Feher will create multiple spaces out of simple materials which will then be activated by several Houston-area composers, choreographers, and …

Continue to Full Post