Sonia Louise Davis

Join us for the official New York launch of Sonia Louise Davis’ slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one). The artist will read from the publication spanning five years of her writing. These collected texts take the shape of manifestos, scores, poetic essays, and prose poems. Many were originally printed as giveaway posters at exhibitions of Davis’ visual artwork and/or incorporated into her live performances. Marks from her graphic notation appear throughout the book. Improvisation is both an artistic practice and a critical methodology for Davis. She states in the introduction: “I believe improvisation can be harnessed for the radical collective action needed to make the world we want to see.”

slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one) is published by Co—Conspirator Press with the support of Feminist Center for Creative Work. Designed by MJ Balvanera, Riso-printed by Neko Natalia.

Sonia Louise Davis’ reading and book launch is part of a series of programs at CARA inviting artists, scholars, and thinkers to present their work in dialogue with Neo Muyanga's exhibition A Mass of Cyborgs. On bi-weekly Saturdays, Hymn to the Strange is performed as a live choral act of revolt songs in Zulu — recomposed by Muyanga and sung by 8 singers of The Unsung. These rehearsals vary and will transform over the course of the exhibition, through a process of continued correspondence between The Unsung collective and Muyanga.

BIO
Born and raised in New York City, Sonia Louise Davis is a visual artist, writer and performer. She has presented her work at the Whitney Museum (NY), ACRE (Chicago), Sadie Halie Projects (Minneapolis), Visitor Welcome Center (LA), Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn) and Rubber Factory (NY), among other venues. Residencies and fellowships include the Laundromat Project’s Create Change Fellowship (NY), Civitella Ranieri (Italy), New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (Brooklyn), Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice (NY), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Artist in Residence Program (NY), and the Studio Immersion Project Fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Print Making Workshop (NY). Her newest book, slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one) was released in 2021 and published by Co—Conspirator Press, a publishing platform that operates out of the Feminist Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles. An honors graduate of Wesleyan University (BA, African American Studies) and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Sonia lives and works in Harlem.