Blooming Underground: A Multi-Media Performance Featuring Mai’a Williams

Friday | November 11 | 7 pm
Winona Arts Center | 228 E 5th St.
winonaarts.org

The Winona Arts Center is pleased to present Blooming Underground, a multi-media installation/performance/shrine by artist Mai’a Williams on November 11, 2022 at 7 pm.  Blooming Underground centers on their relationship to the Driftless natural landscape, the sacredness of Black and First Nations’ lives and histories in this region and globally, and the healing traditions that they learned from their grandmother and elders in rural South Carolina. 

This work explores questions such as: How do we exist in the face of uncertainty, conflict, trauma, and death? How do we find meaning in crises? How do we rest and celebrate? How do we talk to our ancestors and our children? The performance is free and the coffeehouse will open at 6 pm, and the performance will begin at 7 pm.

Mai’a Williams is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works in sculpture, performance, installation, poetry and prose. Their studio, curatorial and research-based practice weaves together their identity as a queer Muslim and a daughter of First Nations and Black American lineages, as well as their experience as a midwife and a mother. Their work is a response to revolutionary mothering, global Black death, their African and First Nations ancestry and joy. It is a reflection of living and working with Egyptian, Palestinian, Congolese, and Central American Indigenous mothers in resistance communities for more than 15 years. 

Mai’a Williams is a fiscal year 2022 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Masks are encouraged but not required. For more information on this event or other events at the Winona Arts Center, please visit our website at www.winonaarts.org.

The Winona Arts Center is a member of the River Arts Alliance. To learn more about the benefits of membership, please visit: riverartsalliance.org/membership/.