Will Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of Black presence and becoming. Rawls created a solo exhibition for Adams Ollman Gallery (2022), as well as a multipart installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle titled Everlasting Stranger (2021). He has presented work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College.

He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography.

In 2016 Rawls co-curated Lost and Found, six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, and in publications including the journal Dancing While Black, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.

Yvette Mayorga is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. The intricate worlds she manufactures in her work respond to utopian visions of immigration and belonging. These narratives intervene in art history and take form through a fusion of Rococo iconography, contemporary images of militarization, confectionary aesthetics, and consumer objects. Her practice is shaped by her experience as a first-generation Latinx artist and her parents’ migration from Jalisco, Mexico to the US. The sumptuous and excessive decoration that marks her projects is inspired by the domestic and colonial religious spaces she navigated transnationally as an adolescent.

She holds an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Vincent Price Art Museum; DePaul Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, the Center for Craft, the Museo Universitario del Chopo, LACMA’s Pacific Standard Time:LA/LA, NXTHVN, Art Design Chicago, the Chicago Artists Coalition, GEARY Contemporary, EXPO, Felix and Untitled Art Fair. In 2020 her project, Meet me at the Green Clock, was commissioned by Johalla Projects as part of the exhibition Andy Warhol–From A to B and Back Again, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was included in the critically acclaimed exhibition ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21, El Museo del Barrio’s inaugural survey of contemporary Latinx art. Mayorga is currently working on a new large-scale commission for the City of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport’s Terminal 5 Expansion public art project opening in 2022.

Yvette Mayorga: What a Time to be will be on view in the Lobby Gallery and Gallery 1.

Yvette Mayorga: What a Time to be is organized by the Momentary and curated by Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, acting curator of visual arts.

It’s 1990 in Northwest Arkansas and big dreams are in the air. The region’s famous, family-owned companies have risen to join the ranks of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Their success will soon go on to transform the Ozarks in ways few could ever imagine.

The Big Free Picture is a multi-disciplinary portrait of a working-class family swept up in the excitement. A humorous, yet complex moment of truth is captured in this unique family photo taken at the local Ramada Inn.

Using photography, storytelling, song, video, and performance, this installation wrestles with the nature of living across the tracks from the American dream. Through the deconstruction and reconstruction of the portrait, Rumwolf explores assorted histories and possible futures tied to both his story and to the story of the region. The audience is invited to listen to the score, read the short story behind the family photo, and join the artist in a series of live activations throughout the exhibition.

Free, no tickets required.

Rumwolf [b. 1981] is a multi-disciplinary visual installation artist, musician and filmmaker based in the Ozarks. His practice focuses on the relationship between art, emotion, and technology expressed through themes of humor, pop culture, and nostalgia. Rumwolf is a 2023 artist-in-residence at the Momentary.

The Big Free Picture is organized and curated by Cynthia Post Hunt, Curator of Performance.

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