Gender/Power

With Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey

Monday – Wednesday, November 30 – December 2, 2020
2:00 – 5:00 PM EDT Daily

Explore how systems of power and control affect our bodies through Gender/Power, a collaborative workshop and teaching methodology led by artists Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey. Informed by the trans and queer experience and based in storytelling and movement, Gender/Power reveals the myriad of ways that authority reinforces gender injustice. Maya and Kris will introduce the framework of the methodology and share performance compositions and scripts developed from previous iterations of the workshop before leading us through the experiential workshop. Drawing from personal stories centered around experiences of privilege or discrimination based on people’s perceptions of our bodies, we will map recurring themes to translate into gestures and a composition of movement. 

Over the three-day workshop, facilitators introduce verbal prompts to get the conversation started. The group takes turns telling personal stories from their experience in response to the prompts. While a group member is speaking, the rest of the group can be actively listening and utilizing “post-it” notes to record a shared or different experience that resonates for them. Later, we transfer the collected “post-it” notes to central digital space, clustering notes from different participants around common themes like shame, fear, policing, surveillance, passing, trauma, etc. When the notes are assembled it helps to visualize the main themes particular to that group. We reflect as a group on the themes and recall previously shared personal stories to match the main themes. Woven into the daily meetings, facilitators introduce movement prompts and invite participants to move their bodies in the way that feels best for them individually. For example a series of gestures might be created based on a word or phrase culled directly from the collective script. Rather than producing a fixed narrative, we will explore how presentation and perception affects everyone.

This workshop is free and open to the public. Participants will be chosen on a first come, first served basis. This Gender/Power workshop will include Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) live caption services. 

About the Artists

Gender/Power is a workshop and teaching methodology that uses storytelling and movement, to question and reveal how participants experience authority based on the perceptions of their bodies. Gender/Power workshops use trans and queer experience as an innovative research methodology that not only elevates the experience of being transgender away from medicalization and pathology, but also reveals gender injustice as an insidious cultural condition affecting everyone regardless of their presentation or identity. 

Performance compositions of Gender/Power have been presented across New York City at Gibney, JACK, and Smack Mellon. Gender/Power has led workshops at Abrons Arts Center, The Invisible Dog Art Center, The University of Utah, and Footsteps. Gender/Power has received residency support from the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and funding support from the Bay and Paul Foundation, the Franklin Furnace Fund, the MAP Fund, and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Gender/Power was a participant in the inaugural 2019 Moving Towards Justice Cohort at Gibney.

Maya Ciarrocchi is a Bronx-based interdisciplinary artist working in a number of modalities including mixed media, video, performance and social practice. In these projects she uses storytelling and embodied mapmaking to reveal vanished histories. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and she has received residencies and fellowships from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Ucross and Wave Hill. Ciarrocchi received a Film/Video Grant from the Jerome Foundation and grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Emergency Grant) and the MAP Fund. In addition to her individual studio practice, Ciarrocchi is a TONY, Bessie and Jeff Award winning projection designer for dance and theater. Recently she participated in the Laboratory for Jewish Culture at the 14th St. Y and was awarded the inaugural Equity b[x] Fellowship through New York Artists Equity. She is a recipient of the 2020 BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts. Ciarrocchi earned an MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, and a BFA in Dance from Purchase College.

Kris Grey is a Brooklyn-based transgender artist who uses their body as raw material, often presenting themselves in states of extreme vulnerability as an invitation to experience transcendence or discover hidden queer histories. Grey’s cultural work includes curatorial projects, performance, writing, and studio production in ceramics. Grey has been a resident artist at the Bronx Museum, Fire Island Artist Residency, ANTI Festival for Contemporary Art, International Centre for Training in the Performing Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, and is currently a Visiting Artist and Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State University through 2021. Grey’s writing titled, Trans*feminism: fragmenting and re-reading the history of art through a trans* perspective, was published by Manchester University Press in Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories. Grey earned a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Ceramics and a Masters Degree in Fine Art from Ohio University in Ceramics. They perform, teach, and exhibit work internationally. 

Caption language borrowed from Smack Mellon:
Captioning for people with hearing impairment will be provided via Otter Live Notes. To access the live transcript in the Zoom meeting, click the red LIVE indicator and then select “View Stream on Otter.ai Live Notes” in the dropdown. The live transcript will open in a separate browser window.

We are now providing captioning with Otter Live Notes – please see our webpage for full instructions.


Photo by Julieta Cervantes.