Artist Talk with André M. Zachery and Edisa Weeks at York’s Arts Gallery Nov 13

Join us on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 5 p.m. at the York College Arts Gallery for a conversation with acclaimed interdisciplinary artist André M. Zachery, the artistic director of Renegade Performance Group (RPG), and choreographer, educator, and curator Edisa Weeks, founder of DELIRIOUS Dances.

^{André M. Zachery and Edisa Weeks will be the featured artists for conversations at York's Arts Gallery this coming Wednesday.}

Zachery's Echo Making, on view in the gallery, is an innovative multimedia installation created for the occasion of the artist's 2024-25 Artist-in-Residence at York College and Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL) through the CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI). It merges technology, movement, and visual art, reimagining African diaspora narratives and challenging traditional storytelling.

For the artist talk, Zachery welcomes Weeks, who grew up in Uganda, Papua New Guinea, and Brooklyn, NY, and creates interactive multimedia work that merges theater with dance. The New York Times described her as having "a gift for simple but striking visual effects." Her work has been performed in various venues, including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Guggenheim Museum, Harlem Stage, The Kennedy Center and The Yard. She received a 2022 Creative Capital Grant and a 2024 MAP Foundation grant.

Highlights of Zachery's Echo-Making include interactive projections, narrative installations, and digital canvases that immerse visitors in Zachery's Afrofuturist vision through dance, media, and public space. Video documentation of a free workshop on Oct 25 shares Zachery's depth of knowledge and approach to choreography. Through the lens of personal experience, the workshop engaged participants with public art at York College by artist Houston Conwill (Arc, 1986), a space of initiation into the Kongo Cosmo gram. Zachery states: What has been and remains most urgent for me now regarding Afrofuturism is that we recognize it as an embodied practice.

RPG's residency is part of the CDI curated for York College by Emily Verla Bovino, assistant professor and coordinator of the York College Art History program and held in partnership with JCAL. CDI receives major support from The Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Howard Gilman Foundation, with additional support provided by the SHS Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Charles E. Culpeper Arts & Culpeper program, and the Harkness Foundation for Dance. CDI is spearheaded by The Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College.

York College Arts Gallery, Academic Core, 1st Floor, York College / CUNY, 94 - 20 Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, Jamaica, Queens. All admission and events at the York College Arts Gallery are free.