It's a Moment is an evening of performance and conversation inspired by McEvoy Foundation for the Arts' (MFA) exhibition 'Orlando' (February 7 - May 2, 2020), which draws upon Virginia Woolf's prescient 1928 novel to celebrate the transformative self.
It's a Moment invites culturally and artistically diverse thinkers to envision a collective future for the arts and arts institutions as sites for community exchange, revolution, and recalibration of perspective and initiative. Co-curators Ryanaustin Dennis and Samantha Maria Xochitl Espinoza ask participants to consider questions that Tilda Swinton posed as guest-editor of Issue #235: Orlando of Aperture magazine: "What is a society? What is a social conscience? What is social responsibility? What is a human? What future can we envisage for ourselves? What is hope?" As it applies to creative practice and arts institutions, the evening offers a platform for countercultural solidarity and broad thinking to emerging East Bay QPOC artists, students, and activists through dance, visual, and film. A small vendors market follows the presentations and performances.
It's a Moment is co-curated by Ryanaustin Dennis and Samantha Maria Xochitl Espinoza. It is co-produced with Pro Arts Gallery & Commons.
Guest curated by Tilda Swinton and organized by Aperture Foundation, New York, Orlando presents recent and commissioned photographs that call upon the central themes of Woolf's novel; gender fluidity, limitlessness, and the deep perspective that is earned from a long life. Supported by a selection of artworks from the McEvoy Family Collection, Orlando offers a panoply of colors and tastes that seek to liberate traditions of portraiture in photography from the constructs of prescriptive gender or social norms at a moment when debates around identity and representation have reinvigorated the story's legacy.