Erin Ellen Kelly presents “Excavate/Activate” as part of “Reimagining Tradition,” a series of site-specific projects throughout NYC.
OCTOBER 13-15: Workshop tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/excavateactivate-workshop-tickets-37810206345
OCTOBER 15: Public performance (contact for location info: contact@opensourcegallery.org)
Erin Ellen Kelly is a dancer and contemporary movement artist. With her “Excavate/Activate,” Kelly seeks to activate a mindful relationship between individuals, their bodies, and the spaces they occupy. Through a series of workshops that draw from her background in qi gong, butoh, somatics, dance, and theatre, she will guide members of the public—dancers and non-dancers alike—as they produce their own concise, intimate movement-based rituals. Sited along Newtown Creek, an industrial waterway with a long history of pollution, Kelly will invite workshop attendees to practice being within the self amidst an imperfect landscape. Participants will then perform their rituals in an event shared with the broader Open Source audience.
“Reimagining Tradition” is a program developed by Open Source Gallery to highlight intersections between socially engaged art and ritual practice through a series of site-specific projects by New York City-based artists. Pieces in “Reimagining Tradition” defy the constraints of traditional gallery exhibitions and blur modern distinctions between art and the sacred. Artists in the program include: Leigh Davis, Erin Ellen Kelly, James Leonard, Jasmine Murrell, Nia I’man Smith, Ultracultural Others
Erin Ellen Kelly’s exhibition record includes Serpentine Slacker Gallery in London, Danspace, the Bass Museum of Art, Flux Factory, and the Anchorage Museum of Art. Her work has been supported by Movement Research, the Carmago Foundation in France, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She collaborates regularly with video artist Mariam Ghani. Their series, “Performed Places”, has exhibited in museums and galleries in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.