If I had the words to tell you we wouldn’t be here now uses storytelling, drag and theatrical devices to explore how language not only gives shape to thought, but shapes thought. The performance stages a dialogue with a desiring queer body and a percussionist to illuminate how identity and experience are not only represented but also created and reinforced through language and naming.

For the North American premiere of If I had the words to tell you we wouldn’t be here now, Sin performs alongside percussionist Nikki Joshi and wears a specially commissioned oceanic costume by Athens-based designer Dimitra Petsa. The work is site-responsive, changing in composition each time it’s performed. If I had the words to tell you we wouldn’t be here now was first performed at Chi Wen gallery in Taipei and later travelled to the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Victoria Sin is an artist whose work uses speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification and objectification. Drawing upon personal encounters of looking and wanting, their work presents heavily constructed fantasy narratives about the often unsettling experience of the physical within the social body.

Recent presentations include Age of You, MOCA, Toronto (2019); Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery, London (2019); Meetings on Art, Venice Biennale, Venice (2019); BCE, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); Art Basel, Hong Kong (2019); Park Nights, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018); and Indifferent Idols, Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Taipei (2018).

Nikki Joshi is a percussionist based in Toronto, where she recently completed the 2018/19 Rebanks Family Fellowship at the Glenn Gould School. She holds a Master’s Degree from McGill University, where she studied with Aiyun Huang. During her time at McGill, she received the 2017 Mobility Award, and travelled to Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland to conduct research at the school’s renowned Department of Music Theatre. Joshi holds a Bachelor’s Degree, Performer’s Certificate, Arts Leadership Certificate and 2015 John Beck Percussion Scholarship from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Michael Burritt.

Support from Beverly and Jack Creed.

SOLD OUT

Performance starts at 7 pm.

Victoria Sin ft. Matteo Gemolo (traverso), If I had the words to tell you we wouldn’t be here now, 2019. Performance part of Meetings on Art, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. Credit Riccardo Banfi. Courtesy Delfina Foundation and Arts Council England.