sweat variant

sweat variant is the collaborative practice of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born. Since 1996, they have been working at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual art to make challenging and rigorous work that reaffirms that which has been deemed marginal as the true center through the exploration of Black interiority. Okpokwasili and Born are interested in building a spectacle of radical intimacy, in which both performers and audience are acknowledged as being locked in a mutual gaze. They hope to activate a space that allows the audience to question who they are looking at, and how they are looking.

Okpokwasili and Born have created the Bessie Award-winning pent up: a revenge dance and Bronx Gothic. The latter continues to tour internationally, most recently to the 2024 Milan Triennale. Other performances include let slip, hold sway, adaku, part : the road opens, Adaku’s Revolt, swallow the moon, Sitting on a Man’s Head, and poor people’s tv room, which also toured the US. Their work has been featured internationally, including at the Berlin Biennale, the Young Vic, and the Tate. Recent works include installations in the exhibitions Grief and Grievance, Art and Mourning in America at the New Museum (NYC), Witchhunt at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Sex Ecologies at Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, poor people’s TV room (solo) installation is in the Hammer Museum and Whitney Museum collections.

For more information about sweat variant / Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, visit www.sweatvariant.com

Photo by Mario Sorrenti / Art Partner