Joy Mariama
Smith
Me reclining on a bench in the garden with fancy hat, exterior shot by Alyssa Reiziger
Performance, installation, and movement artist and educator Joy Mariama Smith’s work focuses on issues related to visibility, projected identities, and self-representation in different contexts, and investigates the interplay between the body and its cultural, social, and physical environment. In their* dance, performances, and installations, they create spaces in which the distinction between spectator and participant becomes blurred and visitors are encouraged to reflect on the ways in which they deal with space. They teach at SNDO-School for New Dance Development, Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam. Their work has been performed internationally, including at Freedom of Movement, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2018; If I Can’t Dance Edition VI – Event and Duration, Amsterdam, 2016; SoLow Festival, Philadelphia, 2015; and Ponderosa, Stolzenhagen, 2013. Smith lives and works in The Hague.
In a time of social distance, characterized by fear of touch and longing for closeness, it becomes clear that the theater is not only a place of hearing and seeing, but also one of manifold touches. In interviews, essays, and conversations, the Haptic Entanglements series asks about the role of touch in the performative arts. About haptic gazes, haptic sounds, and digital intimacy. In texts, questions and exercises, artist Joy Mariama Smith invites us to approach an embodied practice of constent that takes sensing together as its starting point and understands consent less as a contract than as a complex field of relations.
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