Barak adé Soleil

Thursday, March 31, 12:00 p.m.–1:15 p.m.

This event will occur in Central Time.

Click HERE to join via Zoom.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services and have ASL interpretation.

Join us live for a virtual program by artist Barak adé Soleil with an audience Q&A.

Image description: Brown-skinned large bodied black person with a beard, wearing black jeans, long-sleeved black jean shirt, gray baseball cap and clear glasses, seated in a manual silver and black wheelchair speaks into a microphone.

Image description: Brown-skinned large-bodied black person with shaved head & beard, wearing glasses, black shirt and gray jeans, with one hand on a rail and the other holding a wheelchair, seemingly floating above a set of stairs.

Image description: A black person is immersed in dead branches, wearing softly grey pants, white shoes and shirt, their clothed body seems to disappear into the white background.

Image description: Brown skinned black person with shaved head wearing a blue African print neck scarf and blue Ikea bag on back is kneeling on black floor with head bowed.

Barak adé Soleil, Image from collaborative performance with artists Nikki Patin & Mikel Patrick Avery at Rebuild Foundation, Chicago. Photo: Jon Veal

Image description: Large bodied black person with face and body fully covered from head to toe in varied colorful clothes is immersed in blue light, lying the side of their body on the floor, while audience watches from behind.

For over three decades, Barak adé Soleil (he + they pronouns) has contributed to the contemporary arts scene across North and South America, Europe, and West Africa. An award-winning artist, curator, and facilitator, adé Soleil bridges the lived experience of being Black, queer, and multiply disabled with traditions from the African diaspora, access aesthetics, and postmodernism to create multilayered live art works and cultivate stimulating global conversations. adé Soleil is the founder of D UNDERBELLY, an interdisciplinary network of artists of color, and recipient of the prestigious Katherine Dunham Choreography Award given by New York's AUDELCO for Excellence in Black Theatre. Other acknowledgements for adé Soleil's creative work include a 3Arts Foundation Award (2016); 3Arts Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2017); and Art Matters Foundation Award (2017 and 2020). Presentations include "from here to there" for the 2018 exhibition Chicago Disability Activism, Arts, and Design, 1970's to Today at Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago and "a series of movements" for both the 2018 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Toronto and VAE Raleigh's Everyday Series at Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, North Carolina. At 205 Hudson Street Gallery, New York, the work markings premiered as part of the 2019 group exhibition Refiguring The Future.

Internationally, adé Soleil has served as inaugural faculty for the 2021 Wildseed Centre for Arts & Activism Fellowship in Tkaronto, developed creative communal work at Montréal Arts Interculturels, co-curated The TALK at the Prismatic Arts Festival in Ottawa, and currently serves as co-director of the Live Art Development Agency in London.

Presented in partnership with SAIC's Wellness Center and Department of Performance.

View the Barak adé Soleil SAIC Flaxman Library Resource Guide for additional information about the artist.

Barak adé Soleil's website

Barak adé Soleil

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