NEA GRANT FOR THE UNARRIVAL EXPERIMENTS
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, The Unarrival Experiments. (photo: Scott Shaw)
The National Endowment for the Arts has approved an Art Projects grant of $20,000 to Fathomers for the artistic development of Sage Ni’Ja Whitson’s The Unarrival Experiments, an ongoing work that centers theories and mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. Whitson, a nonbinary writer and interdisciplinary artist, is preparing a six-month installation of The Unarrival Experiments for 2022 at the California African American Museum.
Working collectively with scientists, cultural theorists and producers, artists, and musicians convened as Dark Matter Cyphers — groups who meet regularly to draw and expand upon the work of forebears from Black experimental and creative traditions — Whitson and their collaborators catalyze Unconcealment Ceremonies in pitch-black spaces to explore darkness as a landscape and ancestral intelligence, activating techniques of moving in/as deep darkness and of shape-shifting in scientific and spiritual contexts.
Fathomers assisted Whitson in the production of the first digital Cypher convening in June 2020 and is supporting Whitson’s ongoing studio residency at 18th Street Arts Center, a space that acts as a hub for work sessions and the project at large.
“The Unarrival Experiments is at once personal, political, historically rooted, future-seeking, rigorous, open-ended, fully embodied through the physicality of performance, and ‘vaporous’ in its refusal to be fixed to one discipline, vocabulary, history, or narrative,” says Stacy Switzer, curator and executive director of Fathomers. “It exemplifies the kind of ambitious, transdisciplinary, and boundary-moving project we are designed to support.”
About Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson is a nonbinary/transmogrifying artist, performer, and writer who brings together experimental and African Diasporic practices to highlight themes of gender, sexuality, race, and spirit. As a performer and interdisciplinary artist, collaboration is key for Whitson — they have worked with artists notable in experimental form such as Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Daniel Alexander Jones, Baba Israel, and Dianne McIntyre, among many others. Whitson is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow, 2019 Creative Capital Award winner, a 2019 and 2017 Bessie Award winner, a 2018 Jerome/Camargo Fellow, a Jerome Foundation artist-in-residence at Abrons Art Center, a Dance in Process artist-in-residence with Gibney Dance, and a Hedgebrook Fellow. The artist is currently an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, and is the founder and artistic director of the NWA Project.
About Fathomers
Fathomers is a creative research institute dedicated to producing sites and encounters that challenge us to live and act differently in the world. We cultivate the ideas of die-hard dreamers, commission projects that seem far-fetched, and enlist expansive thinkers across disciplines to redefine the limits of scale, scope and support for artist-led projects.
We do this because we value discoveries made absent predetermined outcomes, and we believe in the power of the realized dream as a test site and model for visionary change.
About National Endowment for the Arts
To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.