MATERIAL CONDITIONS:
Two works on autonomy & reproductive justice
Julia Barbosa Landois and KIKI King share a split-bill evening that mixes movement, storytelling, video, and experimental sound to explore themes of reproductive health and freedom.
TICKETS $16-$42
ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES
ABOUT THE PIECES
PRAISE MUSIC SONOGRAM
Julia Barbosa Landois’s Praise Music Sonogram is a live performance that combines spoken word, video, and experimental sound to tell a story of motherhood, miscarriage, and abortion access across national and state borders. Contrasting an unexpected experience in a European haven for healthcare seekers with the medical scarcity and the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade in the U.S., Barbosa Landois delivers a narrative that is both deeply personal and unexpectedly comedic.
Praise Music Sonogram exists where storytelling, community medicine, and transnational healthcare persist as resistance to geographic borders and limits on bodily autonomy. In development as part of a 2023 NPN Creation Fund grant from August 2023-December 2024, the work premiered at DiverseWorks before traveling to the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of El Paso and Links Hall.
ABORT
ABORT is a multifaceted choreographic work that draws inspiration from realms of club culture and the influential contributions of Black Women in rock music. At its core, the project explores the nuances of visibility and self-expression from our Birth until the Present and delves into themes such as sensuality, desire, resilience, and individual agency.
The work creates a landscape, challenging societal labels and their impact on womxns bodies. It endeavors to provide solutions for finding liberation within one's own physicality, embracing both the freedom to express and harnessing the power of silence and solitude. The work is an ongoing journey that investigates the intersection of birth and choice while fostering a sense of community and personal empowerment.
ABORT is a manifestation of a collective Community exploration into freedom within our bodies, as well as the strength of individual choices. It examines the concept of resilience and asks the question: “What does it look and feel like if I have agency in my life?”
ARTISTS & SUPPORT
PRAISE MUSIC SONOGRAM
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Julia Barbosa Landois is a Houston-based multidisciplinary artist whose work teases profundity and absurdity from the everyday and examines the relationship between the intimate and the public. Her unsettling and sometimes funny performances often use commonplace technologies like a cell phone or stationary bike in unexpected ways. Her work is included in the current exhibition Xican-a.o.x. Body (Pérez Art Museum, Miami, June 13, 2024 – February 16, 2025), curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Gilbert Vicario, & Marissa Del Toro. Landois’s live performances have been presented at Fusebox Festival (Austin), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Blaffer Art Museum (University of Houston), Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, and Blue Star Contemporary (San Antonio), among others. Awards include grants from the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures (NALAC), Puffin Foundation, and Houston Arts Alliance, and residencies at Lawndale Art Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany).
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Praise Music Sonogram is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by DiverseWorks, The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org
Praise Music Sonogram is supported in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation. Additional program and general operating support is from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, The Brown Foundation, Inc., Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, Houston Endowment, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, Teiger Foundation, the Wortham Foundation, and DiverseWorks patrons and members, including the DW Arts & Climate Partners.
ABORT
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Kierah {KIKI} King (they/them) holds a BFA in Dance with a minor in Black World Studies from Columbia College Chicago (2020). Homeschooled in their family’s café, Kiki developed a deep appreciation for service, education, and creativity. Their work intertwines social justice, activism, and community building through media, performance, choreography, and workshops.
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Rahila Coats (she/her) is an improviser, dancer, musician and educator who loves to eat up space and eat with her community; her work focuses on black femme experiences and joy.
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Lucy Williams (she/they) is a movement artist and space-maker. They have a background in community care work, specifically providing support for people accessing abortion care through their work with the Chicago Abortion Fund. She is ecstatic to be re-centering her movement practice after a years-long haitus, and honored to have incredible collaborators and mentors such as KIKI King, Erin Kilmurray, Kasey Alfonso, Alix Schillaci, and more.
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Isabella Limosnero (they/them) works as a freelance multidisciplinary artist from Ohlone land, known as Gilroy, CA. Since moving to the Chicagoland area in 2021, they have had the honor of working with other Chicago artists such as the folks who fuel Project Bound, Momentum Sensorium, House of DOV, and more. To read more and connect with them, you can find Isabella at @isabellalimosnero on IG, or at www.isabellaglimosnero.com.
Audio by Professor Wrecks.