STOP F*CKING TOUCHING/LOOKING/STARING/PHONING/_____ ME
Travis Alabanza and Daniel Brathwaite-Shirley

PV 5 September, 7 - 9 PM, performance at 8 PM
Exhibition 8 & 9 September, 1 - 7 PM

STOP F*CKING TOUCHING/LOOKING/STARING/PHONING/_____ ME is the third part of the exhibition/event series What’s good for me is good for you? A physical multilogue exploring narratives of intersectionality through performance practices. More info: www.whatsgoodformeisgoodforyou.eu 

Image: Travis Alabanza, courtesy the artist

Two black, trans-gender non-conforming artists (and friends), Travis Alabanza and Daniel Brathwaite-Shirley, take over Mimosa House. Softly. With care. With anger. With feelings. With live performance, visual archives, film and sound - these friends create something for themselves, for each other, for other 'other's'. 

Travis Alabanza is a writer, performer and artist based in London. Combining spoken word with soundscapes, projections and animations in collaboration with Daniel Brathwaite Shirley, Alabanza will present a variation of a performance based on their debut poetry book “Before I Step Outside [You Love Me]”. Through diary entries, images, poems and essays, Alabanza reveals their experience as a trans person navigating public spaces. Brathwaite-Shirley’s work centres the voices of QTIBPOC - mixing animation and footage, manipulating the two together and creating plans for these bodies to exist. Juxtaposed with a clothes swap initiated by Alabanza during the exhibition period, Brathwaite-Shirley’s video work will take over the gallery space. 

Alabanza and Brathwaite-Shirley first collaborated at this year’s Brighton Art Festival. Alabanza was a resident of the Tate Modern workshop programme in 2016/17, has given lectures and performed at numerous venues in the UK and abroad, amongst them the ICA London, Harvard University and ngbk Berlin. Brathwaite-Shirley’s films were recently shown as part of "I want to show you a body” (2017) at Tate Britain where they also ran a workshop. They also gave artist talks at the Royal Academy and the Photographers Gallery and performed for SPIT! Collective at Frieze Projects 2017. 

Organised with the European Commission Representation in the UK, in partnership with the Lithuanian Cultural Institute London, supported by Old Blue Last Beer

Curator: Nora-Swantje Almes
Associate Curator: Lxo Cohen

Image: Travis Alabanza, courtesy the artist