With sonia louise davis, Rena Anakwe, Sugar Vendil

What sounds emerge from a visual gesture, from a mark made with intention? Participants joined artists and musicians sonia louise davis, Rena Anakwe, and Sugar Vendil for a participatory conversation accompanied by hands-on instrument drawing and making. Throughout the evening, artists reflected on their collaboration through performances at the Queens Museum last year that activated davis’ sounders, a set of custom steel instruments, through improvisation. As a visual artist, writer, and performer, sonia louise davis’ working ethos is invested in improvisation as a form of research that uses the body as a guide. The artist’s philosophy is characterized by improvisation not only as it relates to experimental music, but as a daily exercise of care, resilience, radical softness, and self-determination in the face of systemic injustices. Materials were provided for participants to make their own imagined instruments, or drawings for future sound-making, and the gathering culminated in a collective jam session.