What Is My Work About?
My work utilizes multiple art mediums from installation, video, new media and live performance. It pushes audiences to reach beyond the edges of normativity, and pulls on the traumas of humankind. What is our resilience? Where does it live inside of us? How do we utilize it through our daily rituals? My work is a snapshot of the macro and provides a sobering view of what destructive behaviors we have all been participants in.
Artist Statement
Patrisse Cullors art is a magnified glass, an amplified moment in the raw and vulnerable stories of the invisible. Using theatre techniques, visuals, audio, and dance, her works renders bare the narratives of state induced trauma while lifting up a path towards healing. Her work ultimately asks the audience to identify themselves in relationship to various forms of violence, be it coded in silence behind jail walls or in the coming out stories people of color. Wielding discomfort as her medium, art becomes an invitation to shed complicity and engage broader questions of systemic violence and spiritual rejuvenation.
CV
Education/Training:
Visiting Fellow at the Arcus Center for Social Justice and Leadership 2014
B.A. in Religious Studies UCLA June 2012
Theater of the Oppressed Trained with Augosto Boal and Brent Blair 2002-
present
Exhibitions/Presentations Solos:
2014
“An Evening with Warriors: Speaking the Unspoken” Highways Performance Space
“An Evening with Warriors: Speaking the Unspoken” Claremont Colleges
2013
“Pushing the Envelope” Pieter Performance Space
“Pushing the Envelope” APALC community room
“Stained” USC Imap program
2012
“Stained” Highways Performance Space Beholder’s Series Director
“Stained” Install Weho
“Stained” Pieter Performance Space
“Stained” William Grant Still Art Gallery
Exhibitions/Presentations Group:
2014
Shattering Shame, Breaking Silence: Street Theater outside of the Los Angeles County Jails ( 12 week summer series)
2013
“Rise of the Dandelions” Pieter Peformance Space
“Black and Brown Love” Perris High School- Gymnasium, Cleveland High School Gymnasium
2012
“Stained” Nativethinghood Art Showcase *Director
Heatwave” at the “Various Small Fires” project space Dancer
2011
“Community Rights Theater Troupe” Mercado La Paloma Director and
Producer 2006-2011
2010
“Barefeet Beats” Pieter performance space Producer and Choreographer
2010, and 2006
“Unearthing Altars” Bacchus Director/Choreographer/Producer
“Guerilla Altaring Project” Through out the streets of Los Angeles
2008
“Black And Brown Love” Cleveland High School Stadium Director/Producer
2008-present
“Earth Path of a Diety” 24th Street Theater Producer, Fashion
Designer/Stylist and Producer
2007
Choreographer
“Flash them Threads” Michelle’s XXX co-Director and Runway
Choreographer
“With Love as my Tool I heal my Wounds” 24th Street Theater co-Producer
2006
Choreographer
“Skim- For Every Tear Album Release and Performance” Art-share L.A. co-
Producer and Choreagrapher
2005
“The Sacred Feminine” 24th street theater Dancer/ Choreagrapher
2002
“Art of Resistance” Luna Sol Cafe Poet
2001
“Smokey Robinson” Wiltern Theater Dancer/Choreographer
Residencies:
Artist Resident @ 24th street theater from 2005-2007
Visiting Fellow @ Arcus Center for Social Justice and Leadership 2014
Employment:
Founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in L.A. Jails/Dignity and Power Now ( 2012-present)
co-Artistic Director w. Tribe of the Diasporas (art based collective in los
angeles) 2006-present
co-Director of “Community Rights Theater Troupe” 2006-2011
co-Producer/Director “Black and Brown Love” -Village Nation- 2008-present
Bibliography:
http://www.artinoddplaces.org/dandelions-we-dont-die-we-multiply-riseofthedandelions-and-the-voices-of-the-freedom-harvest-collective-part-2/http://www.artinoddplaces.org/dandelions-we-dont-die-we-multiply-riseofthedandelions-and-the-voices-of-the-freedom-harvest-collective-part-1/http://imap.usc.edu/news-and-events/interview-with-patrisse-cullors/http://enclavelosangeles.com/2014/02/01/an-evening-with-warriors-powerful-queer-voices-of-color/
http://thefeministwire.com/2012/07/patrisse-cullors-stained-a-review/