Najee-Zaid Searcy

Najee-Zaid Searcy’s Emersion

Part of Links Hall’s 2024 Co-MISSION Festival of New Works

Emersion releases that which must be shed. Allowing that which must become through movement, space, scent, and form. Emersion seeks to allow for personal and collective transformation by offering meditations and wellness services when possible. We are conduits reactivating the bodymind, and participating with the energies present.

Collaborators: Alejandro Salazar (Musician), Paige Brown (Musician), and Viktor Le-Givens (Movement and Installation)

Music/Sound: Composed by Najee-Zaid

Special Thanks: Given to my ancestors, family, friends, those who have supported me, and the Links Hall team.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Artist Bios

Najee-Zaid Searcy is a Chicago born interdisciplinary artist with a focus on performance and identity. Najee-Zaid uses their background in music, facilitation, and informal arts learning to explore the intersection of space and identity within the context of healing modalities through his new body of work “Immersion” which received its debut at Elastic Arts late 2022. Najee-Zaid’s latest works combine elemental and plant ancestries with the human experience while hybridizing his performance acoustically, electronically, and spatially with a range of accessible sensory activations. Learn more at najeezaidsearcy.com.

Collaborators

Alejandro Salazar emphasizes love, peace, and unity to audiences through unique performances, education, and the cultural study of Afro-Cuban and Black-American Music. Chicago’s own rising star, Alejandro Salazar, is deeply rooted in the tradition, yet he likes to explore new ways to help people groove and dance more to his infectious swing feel. Alejandro has had the pleasure of playing at clubs, venues, and festivals all over Chicago and the world like The Chicago Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Jazz a la Villette (Paris), Primavera Sound Barcelona, Munch Museum (Oslo), Bourse de Commerce (Paris), Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, The Jazz Showcase, Andy’s Jazz Club, DuSable Museum, The Green Mill, Constellation, and Dorian's to name a few.

A vocalist, pianist and composer, Paige Brown still sometimes lovingly refers to herself as "arts-adjacent" while establishing herself as an artist in her own right. As a Performing Arts Residency Coordinator and as a fan/friend of many in the robust Chicago arts ecosystem, she constantly finds herself in awe of the talent and adventurousness of the creatives she is privileged to witness and support. While she more frequently positions herself contently in the audiences of performances and exhibitions, she is currently navigating a journey of strengthening the inner mechanisms and communal connections to deepen and externalize her own practice more fully. She currently finds joy/peace by communing with plants and other beings, and catalyzing/witnessing the growth of artists and others. She currently finds challenge in her quest to improve at the art of taking things slow, and in reacquainting herself with the simple, playful practices that attracted her to Music, her first love.

Viktor Le-Givens is a found object installation performance artist whose practice centers around the gathering and arrangement of ancestral objects to activate spaces for site specific public rituals. By connecting the material culture of his ancestors with pre and post modern spiritual theologies, le. Givens hopes to extend and reimagine the folk customs of his family . His material archive is comprised of the forgotten and discarded household items found during excavations of East Texas, Louisiana, Havana Cuba and Mexico City. Through the accumulation of these rich cultural artifacts , le. Givens. seeks to create spaces that inspire the activation of cultural and spiritual memory.

This event is part of Links Hall’s 2024 Co-MISSION Festival of New Works, two groundbreaking weekends of new performance and public events. Representing some of the most talented makers in Chicago from dance, performance art, installation, and performance as social practice, four artists present works developed while in-residence at Links during the 2023-2024 season. Featured artists include: Links Hall Residents AiRos 頌恩 medill, Jamila Kekulah, and Eshan Rafi, and Fellows Najee-Zaid Searcy and Lani T. Montreal.