Navild Acosta + Fannie Sosa:
Black Power Naps
Black Power Naps
Last admission at 5.30 pm. Since the audience can move freely in the room during the installation, it is obligatory to wear a mouth and nose cover.
In our western society, relaxation and rest are a luxuries reserved for the privileged and rich. Recent studies have shown that the distribution of rest is determined by race, with people of color regularly getting less sleep than white people.
Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa’s Black Power Naps is a direct response to the Sleep Gap, which the artists see as a continued form of state-sanctioned punishment born from the ongoing legacy of slavery. Reclaiming idleness and play as sources of power and strength, this installation takes over Sophiensæle’s Festsaal and invites people of color to break with constant fatigue by slowing down, resting, and interacting with soft, comfortable surfaces. Our culture has required that people of color present themselves as extraordinary performers, athletes, or entertainers in order to exist in the public realm; Black Power Naps refuses institutionalized exhaustion and demands the redistribution of idleness, down time, and quality sleep.
Due to the current distance and hygiene regulations, the visitors unfortunately cannot sit or lay in the installation as planned. Instead, Fannie Sosa and Navild Acosta invite the audience to move freely in space or pause for a moment in the context of an audio and video installation based on excerpts from earlier Black Power Naps.
BY AND WITH Navild Acosta, Fannie Sosa, Guest performers
Black Power Naps is a production by Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa. Funded by Creative Capital and USA Artists Disability Futures Fund. Medienpartner: taz. die tageszeitung.
Acclaimed scholar and Multi-Award winner Fannie Sosa is an internationally applauded interdisciplinary artist and activist. Texts by Fannie Sosa include “A White Institutions Guide For Welcoming Artists Of Color And Their Audiences”, “Pleasurable MOONStruation”, “The Origins Of Patriarchy” and “Bio-Hack is Black”. Their performance work has been produced by Tate Modern, Matadero Madrid, and Wiener Festwochen. Through their social justice work, Sosa has provided professional development trainings and consultancy for Performance Space New York, Mousonturm and Tate Modern.
Navild Acosta is a Creative Capital Artist, Disability Futures Fellow and an internationally acclaimed artist and activist based in Berlin. Being transgender, queer and black-dominican has inspired his community based work. Navild's written work is featured in Performance Journal, VICE, Brooklyn Magazine, Apogee Journal, BOMB Magazine. Navild's performance works have debuted at Matadero Madrid, Tate Modern, Tanz im August and Kunst-Werke Institut, Wiener Festwochen, The David Roberts Art Foundation, The Kimmel Center, MOMA PS1, Studio Museum, New Museum. Navild has collaborated with Alicia Keys, Fannie Sosa, BEARCAT, Lyle Ashton-Harris & Ralph Lemon.