mansurdance.com
cedartreeproject.com

Contact: sharonmansur@gmail.com

Artist Statement:

My ongoing art practices span experimental and often collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches. I weave performances, site-specific events, visual installations and dance films from the threads of imagination, future dreams, ancestral memories and embodied moments of the present. My creative practice is rooted in deeply cherished relationships with other artists, makers and creatives. I offer audiences immersive art experiences to dive deep into and make themselves at home. I make art because that is the essential way in which I grapple with inherent mysteries and ambiguities in life. I am passionate about resilient and evolving ways to share and support art in my communities.

My current creative research explores the fluidity and uncertainty of the moment, the visceral thrill of movement, and the beauty in both the patterning and unraveling happening all around us all the time. Self and environment as kindred bodies. The visual and kinetic converse. What is subtle and detailed accumulates quietly over time. The exquisite pairing of presence and absence. What is seen as well as what is invisible to the eye, but still palpable. What we conceal and reveal as human beings. The mutable nature of identity. I invite others to also contemplate and engage their curiosities.

Biography:

Sharon Mansur is an SWANA/Arab American dance and interdisciplinary experimental artist, educator, curator, and community mover and shaker based in Keoxa/Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/MN, Dakota country. Her creative practices weave movement making, improvisation, visual environments, food, screendance, audience participation and site-situated/responsive art to offer immersive experiences rooted in body, imagination and environment. She loves creating artistic opportunities for people from all walks of life to connect and engage. Sharon has received support from the McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, Winona Fine Arts Commission and is currently a 2021-22 Springboard for the Arts Creative Economy Fellow. She was also a 2019-20 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow.

Sharon is currently the director of The Cedar Tree Project, presenting and amplifying regional, national and international creative voices from the SWANA/Arab diaspora, to invite deeper understanding and empathy through artistic exchange. She has curated SHIFT~ performance salons to support experimentation and collaboration among Winona based artists since 2016. Sharon also teaches dance at St. Mary’s University, and is a therapeutic bodyworker.