Artists Reach Out: Anna Martine Whitehead

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Anna Martine Whitehead

Anna Martine Whitehead
(photo: Shereen Marisol Meraji)

Anna Martine Whitehead does performance. Her work considering a Black queer relationship to time and space has been presented by venues including the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; San José Museum of Art; Velocity Dance Center; Links Hall; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She has developed her craft working closely with Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, BodyCartography Project, Julien Prévieux, and the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, among others. She has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the Graham Foundation, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, the University of Chicago, 3Arts, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Rauschenberg Foundation, and Djerassi. Martine has written about blackness, queerness, and endurance for Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, frieze, Art Practical; and has contributed chapters to a range of publications including Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford, 2017). Martine is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016).

From Whitehead's Amnesty 2.0 (2019)
(photo: Ricardo Adame)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

As Ni’Ja Whitson said, not one aspect of my life has been untouched by the pandemic. Residencies through the year have been postponed or cancelled. I was in a year-long residency when we began sheltering-in-place. I’d finally begun to reach a rhythm with the cast of the opera I’m writing and choreographing: FORCE! The libretto features a group of queer and trans femmes of color waiting to get into a prison and also escape a strange creeping force. It so happens that people in prison are being the hardest hit by the pandemic, a strange creeping force that they had no part in bringing into their lives. My cast can’t meet in person anymore. So this time has been a reset for all of us, a time to interrogate what is the best use of our talents at this moment when it comes to being of service and getting people free.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I’ve always liked dreaming of other worlds, inhabiting other bodies. Eventually I became a puppeteer. I needed dancers to puppeteer my objects, and at some point realized I could also dance. So then I started dancing. That was about twelve or thirteen years ago.

I was blessed to have people I really respect try me out and teach me what it means to explore making other worlds with my body. Jefferson Pinder and Keith Hennessy and taisha paggett and Every house has a door and Onye Ozuzu. People just tried me out even though I always feel that I’m on a learning curve. But I think that may be how I approach my practice: I do everything as if it’s the first time I’ve ever done it, because it probably is. In some ways that means I can’t fail.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I kiss my hand and touch it all over my face every morning. I’ve been drawing portraits; this feels good. I’ve been trying to finish the libretto, but it’s hard. Anything that has a product on the other end feels excruciatingly difficult. I meet with my dancers every week, and we do movement exercises, shoot the shit, watch Wu Tsang videos together. I take a lot of class online. I’ve been getting back into Body-Mind Centering.

I’m envisioning a revolution--and a reckoning. Within the year we must be able to ask: Why were so many incarcerated people allowed to die? Why didn’t anyone start talking about Black COVID-19 death rates until April? Why are we always the ones dying? Where were people like Zuckerberg and Bezos when hundreds of homeless people were dying across California? I heard Donatella Versace gave $200,000 to ICUs in Milan--what about the millions of Black and Brown women who take care of whole families on $100 a month making Versace and Tom Ford and Armani rich? Armani is worth $10 billion. I heard he gave $1 million to Italian hospitals. This is good, but why is there any bottom line at all? Why can’t the richest people in the world forego a year’s salary and wipe out global debt? How is it acceptable that this has not happened?

We have to be able to ask ourselves these questions, and if the answer is "Because we don’t actually care about Black and Brown people, and we don’t care about poor people, and we don’t care about women," we have to reckon with that, or face the consequences. I think we are already facing the consequences now, but not to their fullest extent. We still have time to repent.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

One thing I’d like to see before I die--which hopefully is a long way off--is Black women, femmes, trans, and gnc folks doing a lot less. I envision a future where all Black people nap every day, and I’m not talking 15-minute naps. I’m so blessed to be paid right now for teaching. And though shifting classes online was a lot of work, I have much more space today than I would have had the semester continued on as usual. So I have space to breathe, take walks, call my family. I see this of many of my friends who are Black and Brown women and femmes. Some of us (though not enough of us) have more room to take in more breath. I’m trying to catalogue what this feels like in my body so that I’m able to transmit this practice later on to those who still haven’t had the opportunity to experience it. I’m trying to learn the practice so it feels more comfortable.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I’m not sure it does. I try to spend no more than ⅓ of the day in the world we have now.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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