Wednesday, November 13th at 7:30 PM
New Media Works by Bleue Liverpool, Fina Ferrara, Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, and Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
Join us for a night of incisive and emotionally resonant new media works. Work include: Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s documentary short, FIREWALL which tells her story of facing censorship while producing a new media work exposing the limits of Internet freedom. Bleue Liverpool’s newest expanded cinematic essay ARTICLE 19___ responds to international cultural workers facing McCarthyist-style sanctions on their freedom of expression. Fina Ferrara’s visceral short film SARAH, delves into vulnerability and the complexity of processing grief. Ferrara created SARAH, a performance on video, as part of her healing journey after undergoing an abortion. In Monterrey, Mexico abortions are illegal, and open discussion of reproductive justice and artworks about it are suppressed. Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre’s multivocal collection of short films, 3 x 13, features a dance film performed by Palestinian artist Samaa Wakim, choreographed by Samar Haddad King, and directed by Eimi Imanishi. Wakim recounts a daily bus ride to Haifa University and the assumptions of fellow passengers and questions of safety which arise in the time of a trip, offering an intimate glimpse into her inner and outer worlds as a Palestinian woman. Learn more about each film below!
FireWAll By Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s documentary short, FIREWALL, tells the artist’s story facing censorship while producing a new media work exposing the limits of Internet freedom. In 2016, Lee first exhibited an interactive installation work, FIREWALL, which allows audiences to see side-by-side comparisons of image search results from Google in the U.S. with Baidu in China. When Chinese authorities attended the New York City event to prevent Liu Miaoqing, a Chinese women's rights lawyer, from participating, FIREWALL got media attention and critical art prominence. Lee’s documentary traces her censorship battle in NYC and in subsequent exhibits abroad with human rights and art activist groups, raising awareness of China’s growing international influence in geo-politics, technology, economic prowess, and cultural dissemination.
ARTICLE 19___ By Bleue Liverpool
Bleue Liverpool’s newest expanded cinematic essay ARTICLE 19___ responds to international cultural workers facing McCarthyist-style sanctions on their freedom of expression. With ARTICLE 19___, Liverpool takes on a Situationist International (1957-1972) satirical intervention with the 1948 international document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ARTICLE 19___ explores themes of state-censored suppression, contemporary colonialist expansion, quotidian consumerist use of Disneyfication, and potential grass-roots resistance practices that can be maintained in the imminent event of complete government suppression.
Sarah By Fina Ferrara
The artist’s body is storyteller, memory-holder, and site of state violence. In the words of Mexican artist Fina Ferrara: Unauthorized grief, also called silent grief or forbidden grief is that which we ourselves, the environment or the society in which we live, denies us or forces us not to express in the way we need to. We freeze our hearts in order not to feel. Ferrara’s visceral short film SARAH, delves into vulnerability and the complexity of processing grief. Ferrara created SARAH, a performance on video, as part of her healing journey after undergoing an abortion. Ferrara recounts making the tough decision to exercise reproductive choice with “a cold heart in order not to feel”, setting the choice aside quickly afterward. Her grieving process, however, began two years later, expressed vividly and tenderly through this film. SARAH poignantly reminds us of the intimate complexity of reproductive choice, giving voice to unauthorized grief—a theme often overshadowed in the chaos of U.S. and global governments rushing to strip away bodily autonomy and silence advocates of reproductive justice.
3 x 13 By Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre
3 x 13 is a film produced by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre comprised of thirteen short films in which twelve performers from eight countries around the globe share a journey of transformation that deeply marked their life. Choreographed by Samar Haddad King and Directed by Eimi Imanishi with original score by Lou Tides, Samaa Wakim’s three minute dance film within 3 x 13 recounts the Palestinian artist and choreographer's nearly daily bus ride to university: I enter and the game begins. The other passengers check my face, and I check theirs, trying to place each other in a box. Wakim’s film addresses the assumptions and questions of safety which arise in the time of a bus ride to Haifa, offering an intimate glimpse into her inner and outer worlds as a Palestinian woman. 3 x 13 will also be screened in full at undoxx on November 22.
About the artists
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee is a visual artist who combines video, glass sculpture, and interactive installation with social practice and institutional critique. Her artwork examines how media, technology, and culture shape notions of truth and understanding of the "other." She recently exhibited at The Delaware Contemporary and Kreeger Museums; and her artwork has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hong Kong Free Press, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic and on BBC Radio. She received grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Arts Mid-Hudson, Asian Women Giving Circle; Franklin Furnace Fund, Maryland State Arts Council and The Walters Art Museum; and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower and Hamiltonian Artists. Her project about Internet censorship, FIREWALL, garnered backlash from Chinese state authorities in 2016 and has been presented at the Hong Kong Center for Community Cultural Development, Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ), and the Oslo Freedom Forum in New York, Norway, and Taiwan. Joyce received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Pratt Institute in NYC.
Bleue Liverpool is a Caribbean-American fluxus Intermedia arts practitioner. She is second-generation Lesser Antillean of the island nations Grenada, St. Vincent, and Haiti. Liverpool grew up in a port city, is talented at geometry and has inherited Movement(s). Her work is informed by multicultural anti-colonial feminist discourses, afro-surrealism, Situationist afro-marxism, and the Nègritude/Créolité movement. Liverpool holds an MFA in film/video from Bard College (2022), New York, U.S.A. She was The Mary Ellen Mark Memorial Scholar for the certification program in New Media Narratives at The International Center Of Photography (2018) in New York City. Liverpool attended Université Paris VIII St. Denis Vincennes for Cinema Studies and Brooklyn College for Documentary Film Production. Her candidacy in the practice-based doctoral program at Goldsmiths University of London in the Visual Cultures department will commence in September 2025.
Fina Ferrara is a Mexican performance and video artist. She started her artistic career as a professional classical ballet dancer at the age of 10. Seeking to exploit her interpretative skills, she later incorporated contemporary dance and theater into her training. Exploring movement is a fundamental element in her work. In 2010, she decided to step out of the stage and interact intimately with the audience, performing in art galleries, museums, and art fairs. Producing video art is her secondary, though equally strong, form of expression. As a multidisciplinary artist, she creates sculpture, photography, painting, and installation, and composes original music for her own work, collaborating with other artists as well. Ferrara’s work has been exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Venice, Rome, Madrid, Marbella, Turkey, Colombia, Brazil, Chicago, and, of course, Mexico. She has been awarded the Power of Creativity Art Prize and Faces of the Peace Art Prize by Contemporary Art Curator Magazine, in 2021 and 2022 respectively, the International Prize Leonardo da Vinci, The Universal Artist, in 2023, and selected as one of the Top Contemporary Artists to watch in 2024 by Contemporary Art Curator Magazine. For Fina, performance is an ongoing act of collective self-evolution.
Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) creates invigorating performance and education programs that expand access to - and promote understanding through - the arts. Founded in 2005 by Samar Haddad King in NYC, YSDT has a repertoire of 30+ original works performed across NYC, regionally, and abroad in 18 countries across four continents. Since 2011, the company has worked transnationally between NYC and Palestine, and is committed to uniting diverse artists and audiences in the creative process, rooted in the belief that art should be liberating, transformative, and accessible to all. For more information, visit: www.ysdt.org.