Val Jeanty and Risha Rox: Ritual Merging
A Merging of Sound and Human Painting - AfroElectronica + Corporealism - Reframing the Black Body and Inspiring Action
Sound artist Val Jeanty and performance artist Risha Rox – two Caribbean American artists whose work explores the diaspora, death, ritual, the ancient past and an envisioned future – are currently developing a live art show in which they foster a ritual that merges Jeanty’s soundscape and projection work with Rox’s live painting of human canvases. The final product will be a potent ritual, with the black body as focal site of breath work, movement, projection, sound and visuals.
Informed by the legacies of Haitian Voodoo, Jamaican Pukumina, New Orleans funereal processions, Americana, Afro-Caribbean carnival, Black speculative fiction, and the creative energy of Afrofuturism, the intention of this work, which exists in the complex bardo between mortality and immortality/despair and joy/past and future/the literal surface and figurative core, is to inspire reflection, reverence and most of all, action.
Media Highlights
Birmingham New Music Festival 2024: IN MEDIA RES
Hulsey Recital Hall, University of Alabama at Birmingham
“Domme and Giovanni” – a Modern Twist on a Classic Opera
La Voile, 1627 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA
Birmingham New Music Festival 2024: SOUNDSCAPES
Hulsey Recital Hall, University of Alabama at Birmingham