Vox Populi is Proud to Announce Malachi Lily as 2019 Black Box Curatorial Fellow
Black Box Fellowship & Artist Talk
Thursday, May 23, 2019 | 7pm
Children of Sirius
Curated Programs & Performances
Saturday, June 1 – Sunday, June 2, 2019
*Schedule and Details to Be Announced Soon*
Vox Populi is proud to announce Malachi Lily as 2019 Black Box Curatorial Fellow. Selected from an open call issued to Philadelphia-area curators and organizers of time-based artwork (performance, film/video, dance, music, and new or experimental genres), Malachi’s fellowship entails two-months of research and development leading up to the presentation of a Fellowship and Artist Talk on Thursday, May 23, 2019, at 7pm, which will take the form of a storytelling event with featured artists, and a weekend-long presentation of Children of Sirius, including performances and programs running from Saturday, June 1 – Sunday, June 2, 2019. Details of the Children of Sirius performances and programs will be released in a subsequent announcement.
Malachi describes Children of Sirius as “a two-day glimpse into the lives of gods who come to earth in black bodies to experience and romp in your 3-Dimensional reality.” Featuring many artists and performers throughout Philadelphia, Malachi says that Children of Sirius is intended as “a declaration, a feast, a war-cry, and a lullaby. Together, these voices proclaim that their experience is divine.” Transforming Vox Populi’s Black Box performing arts space into a “sacred cave, an ephemeral place of pilgrimage for all people, but especially black people,” the programs Malachi is preparing are intended to “wake the divinity within the observer of this colorful and meditative place.”
Malachi’s fellowship at Vox Populi is followed by a subsequent curatorial fellowship this fall at the Da Vinci Art Alliance (704 Catharine St, Philadelphia, PA 19147). There, Malachi will be curating (alongside DVAA Technical Director D’Andre Jarod Smith) the exhibition Temple of Sirius, a continuation of their Black Box Fellowship project. Open from October 6 – 27, 2019, the exhibition will feature black bodies as deities and include sculpture, digital media and paper arts.
Since 2013, Vox Populi has supported the work of curators focusing on time-based arts and performance practices through the Black Box Curatorial Fellowship (previously known as AUX Curatorial Fellowship). Managed by Vox’s Black Box Committee, the Fellowship offers financial, facilities, administrative and programming support to one curator or curatorial collective located in Philadelphia or surrounding areas focusing on the research, development and presentation of live or durational forms – including performance, dance, music, poetry, film/video and new or emergent genres. Previous Fellows include Marissa Perel, Jamillah James, Whitney Kimball, Anthony Romero, Katya Grokhovsky and Sage Adams.
ABOUT MALACHI LILY
Malachi Lily is a shapeshifting, non-binary, black poet, artist, curator, and moth. They connect to the collective unconscious via energy work, active imagination, mysticism, myth, magick, folklore, and fairy tales. This channeling often takes the form of poetry and illustration, but at Vox Populi that work becomes curation as they connect to another artist’s energy and work beyond simply aesthetics. Malachi connects artists who are unconsciously vibrating together and uses their organizational skills to give them all a space to sing. Malachi’s curation forms a tangible permeation of a culture of Oneness – living in the reality that we all are manifestations of the same source energy and we all create our realities together. It is Malachi’s purpose to create space to uplift fellow black artists as gods, to bring balance and truth to their experiences. Malachi is a liminal being of race, gender, artistic practice, and existence reclaiming the spiritual body of black and brown people who experience generational trauma and colonization. Their work offers methods to break these individual barriers and reveals the symbols, archetypes, emotions, and lessons that exist in everyone as a collective consciousness, to heal, awake, and empower.
More information: maggielily.com / @theholyhawkmoth / @hawkmothevents
Support for Vox Populi’s Black Box Curatorial Fellowship is provided by the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.