MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts ProgramThrough the performances of personae and social interventions, I cultivate a critical and transformative dialogue between diverse communities. My performance characters are semi-autobiographical, mythic, tragic, pathetic, and heroic. Uncle Bob is a character from the “Borscht Belt” of the Catskills, NY. As a “toomler,” he leads Conga Lines, hosts variety shows, and teaches dance lessons on a chocolate-coated floor to audiences in social spaces that range from the sidewalk to art galleries to street fairs. Butch in the Kitchen provides Tupperware-packed meals and “heart burgers” for art-hungry crowds. Dew Drop Lady in a housedress and “schmatah” reminisces about the nickel empire heyday at Coney Island. Amidst communities of European Jews, she exposes the conflicts between blacks and Jews in America. My current work responds to the complex relationships between African-Americans and Jews. My performances explore some of the ways and reasons that Jews have used black masquerade in American popular culture. I have performed as both my African-American and Jewish grandmothers, a comedian, ballerina, teenager, dance teacher, talk show host, and entrepreneur of a meal plan service. Living and performing on the borders of these constructions of identity allow me to sight and engage the toxicity, as well as poignancy, of interactions and conditions that lie latent and undetected in the social field. Performing and developing shifts of social paradigm are a prototype for my work as a teacher. Additionally, my experience as co-director of BUILD, a gallery in the queer hub of San Francisco’s Mission, set the stage for my commitment to teaching and community organizing. At BUILD and over the past 15 years, I have taught and expanded traditional curricula for courses in two and three-dimensional media, video, art history, visual culture, critical theory, contemporary issues, and community engagement. My primary goal is that the students I advise understand and respond to the multiple ways they can engage, inherit knowledge from, and collectively incise new meanings in all of their surrounding sites and situations. I have performed at art spaces, galleries, festivals, and museums nationally, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Jewish Museum (NY), Bronx Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), and Arizona State University Art Museum. I also lecture at conferences and universities including the Open Engagement Conference (Portland, OR), Intervene! Interrupt! (UC Santa Cruz), Northwestern University, New York University, and Wayne State University. I have been awarded grants and fellowships from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Urban Artist Initiative, and the Skowhegan School of Art. My teaching experience includes School of Art and Design at University of Michigan, School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Queens College (CUNY), York College (CUNY), and the Harvey Milk Institute of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies (San Francisco). I am delighted to be a returning faculty advisor to Goddard, where I taught at the Plainfield, VT campus from 2005-2007. Please visit my website at: http://www.danielleabrams.com.
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Danielle Abrams, MFA