Photo: MukhAgni, work in progress. Image courtesy of Hoke-Brady Designs.

Artists: Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Kameron Neal (NYC)

MukhAgni is a living will. Two queer, colored lovers fumble toward the question: what do we want to happen to our bodies after we die? What are the consequences of our material after-lives? Ashes pollute rivers; buried bodies take up real estate. We are reaching toward a continuity between human and geological time: the quick, drastic brushstrokes of life bleeding into the slow canvas of erosion and sedimentation.

MukhAgni takes its name from the Hindu crematory practice of putting fire into the mouth of the dead. What do we do with the rituals we inherit? Rituals into which we do not neatly fit. Rituals which themselves chafe against the sanitized business of dying in still-colonial America.

This performance constitutes a closing event for Imani Roach’s solo exhibition, Heirloom.