Sat 7/25 @ 8PM-midnight
KING COBRA is a Philadelphia-based artist who creates sculptures from glass, silicone, beads, crystals, rubber, synthetic hair, “mysterious goo” and other materials to address the history of the medical exploitation of Black bodies. She’s also a filmmaker and body modifier who sees tattooing as an extension of her artistic practice. Currently, her exhibit When You Are Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, described as “her most significant and monumental work to date,” is on view at MoCa Cleveland.
It features a large Great White Shark made from some of the materials listed above, as well as ink applied with a tattoo machine, suspended within a cage of fluorescent tubes, with audio and lighting adding to the strange, unsettling display which reflects on the Middle Passage, when slaves were brought from Africa to the Americas under cruel and onerous conditions.
Doesn’t really sound like material to fuel a House Dance Party but after viewing the exhibit and hearing a talk, maybe it’s just what’s needed to take the pressure off in an event MoCa is hosting called “Second Skin in Bondage,” which unites art, tattoo culture, kink, self-expression and dance. There’ll be a conversation about “desire, consent, identity and body liberation” with KING COBRA, sex educator Ericka Hart and local community advocate Gulnar Feerasta from the LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland, moderated by moCa Cleveland’s deputy director/senior curator DJ Hellerman.
Doors open at8; talk is at 9pm. Then from 10pm-midnight, you can get loose and dance off all your pent-up tension to music spun by DJ Red-I and DJ Scene. It’s an 18+ event, and there will be food and drink available. The galleries will be open from 8-11pm. Go HERE for tickets.