Pace Live

Will Rawls

I make me [sic]

Saturday, Apr 30
1201 South La Brea Ave
Los Angeles

Event Details:

Will Rawls
I make me [sic]
Saturday, Apr 30
12 PM and 2 PM
1201 South La Brea Ave
Los Angeles

How to Attend:

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Connect:

(opens in a new window) @willjrawls
(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Above: Will Rawls, I make me [sic], 2016/2022 © Charles Roussel

As part of the inaugural programming at Pace's LA gallery, choreographer Will Rawls will install his performance I make me [sic] (2016/2022).

Shuttling between anecdotes and reconstructed performances, I make me [sic] builds a portrait of Rawls' performance labor in other works, including a role as a zombie in the post-apocalyptic film I am Legend (2007). The 30-minute work will be presented at 12 PM and 2 PM on Saturday, April 30.

I make me [sic] will be the debut Pace Live performance in the courtyard of the gallery’s new LA home. This outdoor space will host future public programs from Pace Live, sculpture exhibitions, and other events. For Esmé – with Love and Squalor, an exhibition featuring 13 new velvet paintings and a large-scale bronze sculpture by the artist Julian Schnabel, is also being presented as part of the gallery’s inaugural program in LA.

Rawls, who served as the 2020-21 California Regents Professor in UCLA's department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, often works with voice and dance as critical tools for playful and sinister transfiguration. Utilizing text, installation, sculpture, screenprinting and video in his practice, Rawls further meditates on enactments and expressions of black presence across multiple media. His work has previously been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, Performa 15, The Chocolate Factory, and Danspace Project in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the 10th Berlin Biennale; and other venues. Rawls has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2021 Alpert Award, a 2021 Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists Grant, and a National Dance Project Award.

Will Rawls

Will Rawls is a New York-based choreographer, dancer, and writer whose work unfolds at the edges of sense when dance and language clash.

His multi-disciplinary work exists at theaters, galleries and museums, and focuses on how black performance rescripts the visibility and erasure inherent in anti-black perception. His next work, [siccer], will premiere at The Kitchen in 2023 and continue on a national tour.

He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and several universities and museums. In 2020-2021, he held an appointment as the UC Regents Professor in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures, and will return in 2022 as Lecturer in New Genres at UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS on dancers, women, and people of color. He lectures widely in academic and community contexts and his writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, and Artforum.