New Orleans' Rashaad Newsome Returns for Mélange at the Contemporary Arts Center

The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (CAC) is pleased to announce that New Orleans native Rashaad Newsome returns for his interdisciplinary presentation of Mélange. Including films and recent works on paper, as well as the artist's vogue performance, this assembly of genre-bending works frames both Newsome's live performance and studio practice through the history of collage. Using layered constructions of formal material to investigate layered constructions of social identity, Mélange borrows from dance, technology, gaming, and hand-crafted collage for a transformative presentation of art in motion. The visual arts exhibition will be on view in the CAC Galleries January 14-February 12, 2017.

This one-night-only evening of performances will take place on January 20 at 7:30pm and 9:30pm. In the Mélange performances, five dancers represent the five elements of vogue femme-hands, cat walk, floor performance, spin dips, and duck walking. As each dancer takes the floor, a hip-hop M.C., an operatic vocalist, and local musicians improvise an interactive soundtrack, building to a beautifully-structured crescendo of sound and movement.

Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans

Advance Tickets $35 General Admission | $25 CAC Members

Day of Show $40 General Admission | $30 CAC Members

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Buy at CAC Box Office 504.528.3805

Visit cacno.org to purchase tickets and for more information about exhibitions, related programs, and special events.

RELATED PROGRAMS

Film & Discussion

bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation

Sunday, January 15 at 2pm

Free Admission with RSVP

bell hooks is among the leading public intellectuals of her generation. Her writings cover a broad range of topics including gender, race, teaching, and contemporary culture. In this two-part film, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, hooks makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism.

Following the film-screening, Rashaad Newsome joins writer and critic Darnell L. Moore for a conversation on the intersection of race, capitalism, and gender. Using hooks' framework, they examine popular culture and how art can be used as a means to help viewers understand the politics of difference.

Mélange Afterparty with DJ Jubilee and DJ MikeQ

Saturday, January 20 at 9:30pm

Free Admission with RSVP

Following Rashaad Newsome's Mélange performance, the undisputed King of Bounce, DJ Jubilee and the undisputed King of Vogue tracks, DJ MikeQ, have a spinoff of bounce and vogue anthems. A food truck and bar will be on-site.

Conversation: Rashaad Newsome with Amanda Hunt

Saturday, January 21 at 7pm

Free Admission with RSVP

During this conversation, Rashaad Newsome and Amanda Hunt, Assistant Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem come together to discuss Mélange and Newsome's multidisciplinary practice.

ABOUT RASHAAD NEWSOME

Rashaad Newsome was born in New Orleans, LA in 1979. He lives and works in New York City, NY as a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends several practices together including: collage, sculpture, video, music, computer programming and performance, to form an altogether new field. Best known for his visually stunning collages housed in custom frames, Newsome's work is deeply invested in how images used in media and popular culture communicate distorted notions of power. Using the equalizing force of sampling, he crafts compositions that surprise in their associative potential and walk the tightrope between intersectionality, social practice, and abstraction. Newsome's work opposes cultural essentialisms-they lead us into a realm of uncertainty, in which the symbols presented transform, but are nonetheless made tangible.

ABOUT THE CAC

The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a multidisciplinary arts center dedicated to the presentation, production, and promotion of the art of our time. Formed in 1976 by a passionate group of visual and performing artists when the movement to tear down the walls between visual and performing arts was active nationwide, the CAC expresses its mission by organizing world class curated exhibitions, performances, and public programs that educate and enlarge audiences for the arts while encouraging collaboration among diverse stakeholders composed of artists, institutions, communities, and supporters throughout the world.

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