Combining sculpture and dance with a profound interest in ceremony and ritual, Senga Nengudi champions experimentation with unconventional materials and forms of expression. You are invited to preview a new activation of Nengudi’s sculpture titled R.S.V.P. Performance Piece, which is in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre in Paris and on view in the current DAM exhibition Senga Nengudi: Topologies. Senga Nengudi serves as the creative lead in this Denver-based collaboration with dancer Ralaya Goshea and violinist Monique Brooks Roberts in a film by Jonathan Martin.
Senga Nengudi’s career emerged in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s and she is largely associated with other avant-garde black artists from that period.
She developed a style melding the body in movement with the use of common, everyday materials in a series of collaborative performances with her artist peers, including Maren Hassinger, Ulysses Jenkins, Franklin Parker, Houston Conwill, David Hammons and Barbara McCullough. Nengudi’s approach to art is inspired by and rooted in ritualistic performances from a wide range of sources including traditional African ceremonies, Japanese Kabuki Theater, events of the 1960s and other forms of modern dance. These cultural forms and rituals are at the root of Nengudi’s practice as a performance artist.