Anna Martine Whitehead
(she/they)
2019-20 AIR
(Logan Center Gallery)
Annamartine.com
Force-anopera.com
Instagram: @thee_annatomy and @forceanopera
Anna Martine Whitehead does performance. She has been presented by venues including the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; San José Museum of Art; Velocity Dance Center; Chicago Cultural Center; Links Hall; AUNTS; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She has developed her craft working closely with Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, BodyCartography Project, Julien Prévieux, and the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, among others. She has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the Graham Foundation, MAP Fund, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, the University of Chicago, 3Arts, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Rauschenberg Foundation, and Djerassi. Martine has written about blackness, queerness, and bodies in action for Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, frieze, Art Practical; and has contributed chapters to a range of publications including Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford, 2017), Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements (Sobsercove, 2016), Platforms: Ten Years of Chances Dances (2016), and Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism (NYU, 2009). Martine is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016).
ALL VIDEOS CREATED BY ON THE REAL FILM • https://www.ontherealfilm.com
All that Light: Works Detail
15.
untitled / A Presence
Anna Martine Whitehead
2021
Mylar reflective blankets
Logan Center Exhibitions
Curator’s Notes
Anna Martine Whitehead uses "dance, projections, sound collage, and wearable sculpture to meditate on the nature of the Black body." The reflective blankets in this installation are often used to provide insulation for people who are unhoused, and are in their overt specialty illustrative of our myriad societal dichotomies and incongruities when it comes to who experiences excess and who experiences lack.
Additional Reading
Chicago Reader highlights two works by Anna Martine Whitehead
6.
Cadenza
[Video]
Anna Martine Whitehead
2022
24:08
in collaboration with FORCE! an opera and Wills Glasspiegel
On view in the screening room at the Logan Center
Excerpt from Chicago Reader, about Cadenza
Cadenza—named for virtuosic ornamental passages often improvised by performers—is “an extension of FORCE! It gives a taste of it and does its own thing,” says Whitehead. “It’s not quite a documentary—it draws on the aesthetics and poetics of the opera, it’s another iteration of it.”
About FORCE! an opera
“FORCE! is a meditation on Black women, femmes, and queer people in invisible places like prison waiting rooms. FORCE! is an opera and a practice. We resource ourselves to dream, play, and rest while we work to imagine worlds on the other side of the Prison Industrial Complex.” Learn more on the in-depth website for the work: www.force-anopera.com