Study Sessions: Aliza Shvarts, Ayanna Dozier, and Narcissister

Floor 3, Education Center

Study Sessions is an ongoing event series inspired by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of study as “what you do with other people.” For each Study Session, an artist, writer, or cultural worker selects a work of art on view in the Whitney’s galleries as a departure point for thinking through an urgent question in our contemporary political landscape. Participants are invited to join together in open-ended discussions and engage with creative practice. Study Sessions may take the form of workshops, listening parties, performances, readings, or film screenings. This session is led by Ayanna Dozier, Aliza Shvarts, and Narcissister. They will use Alice Neel’s Andy Warhol (1970) to engage participants in questions around the gaze, performance, and the body.

Aliza Shvarts is an artist and writer who takes a queer feminist approach to reproductive labor and language. Her recent work focuses on testimony and its gendered and racial exclusions. She was a 2014-15 Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program, a 2014 recipient of the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and is completing a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at New York University while teaching at the Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Her work is currently on view at SculptureCenter as part of In Practice: Other Objects.

Ayanna Dozier is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History & Communication and Women & Gender Studies at McGill University, a Fellow in the Whitney Independent Studies Program, and a lecturer at Fordham University. Her dissertation, The Aberrations of Affect: Archives, Ritual, and the Counter-Poetics of Black Women’s Experimental Short Films (1970s-Present), examines the formal and narrative aesthetics in the work of Black women filmmakers. Her writings as a cultural theorist can be found in Another Gaze, Cléo, Feminist Media Studies, and others.

Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Masked and merkin-ed, she works at the intersection of dance, art, and activism in a range of media, including film, video art, and experimental music. She has presented work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums, and galleries. She won “Best Use of a Sex Toy” at The Good Vibrations Erotic Film Festival, a Bessie Award nomination for the theatrical performance of Organ Player, and Creative Capital and United States Artists Awards. Interested in troubling the popular entertainment and experimental art divide, she appeared on America’s Got Talent. She is a 2018 Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow.

This event is free with Museum admission during Pay-What-You-Wish Friday hours. Registration is required.