COS x Serpentine Galleries Park Nights 2019: Shawanda Corbett, Blackbird in Mississippi

About

Artist Shawanda Corbett presents Blackbird in Mississippi, a performance from the perspective of a black woman with a disability, in which the artist draws parallels between a slave’s voyages on the underground railroad to the artist’s own journey for rehabilitation.

Shawanda Corbett’s interdisciplinary practice addresses the question of what is a complete body, looking at the different cycles of a human’s life through cyborg theory. She uses her perspective as a woman of colour with a disability to root theory into reality. Corbett’s performances are developed around the architecture of a particular space. Collaborating with choreographer, Albert Corbett, she responds to the performance space through a live inner dialogue. Corbett’s performances incorporate her ceramics practice, where the human body, architecture and dance leave their traces on her pottery vessels and surfaces. Corbett is pursuing a doctoral degree in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art and Wadham College, University of Oxford.