“Suzanne Bocanegra’s art is an antidote to the history-free, prepackaged world that threatens every day to overwhelm us. Her work is also beautiful.” – The New Yorker
“An illuminating theatrical portrait of the mind of an artist at work.” –New York Times
A lecture? A performance? An idiosyncratic conjoining of both? Visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra uses theater to interrogate the history and practice of the visual arts. Part performance, part memoir, and part gleefully rambling cultural essay, her “Artist Performance Lectures” are intensely personal, exhaustively researched, and kaleidoscopically wide-ranging. With the assistance of a series of mirthful “guests,” she explains the hows and whys of being an artist, while offering elucidating meditations on art-making, history, popular culture and our shifting ideals of human beauty.
Honor, starring Lili Taylor and directed by Geoff Sobelle, is based on a 16th-century tapestry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Honor,” which depicts 69 historical and allegorical figures who offer personal stories as moral lessons in honor and in dishonor. Bocanegra’s very close reading of the tapestry leads her to weave together such diverse topics as Carole King’s Tapestry album, tableau vivant, the founding of the Girl Scouts of America, Anni Albers, the Monkees, and the history of theater.