Photo Credit: Stayci Bell, taken at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park

ArtXchange: Response-able

This is a virtual event that will take place via Zoom.

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ArtXchange is a salon-style series featuring local artists who use their work as a vehicle for dialogue and initiating change in their communities and beyond. For this installment of ArtXchange, Jay Apollo, Stayci Bell, Kat Purcell and Dez Bilges, will share reflections on their time spent in co-creative conversations with residents of encampments, housed neighbors, and each other over the summer of 2020. Together, we will explore the role of artists in political & social upheaval, consider what counts as art-making, and illuminate where we all might have more agency to affect change than we think.
Photo Credit: Stayci Bell, taken at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park

Artist Bios

Kat Purcell (they/them) is a nonbinary trans performer, lighting designer, experimental producer, installation artist and theatrical director. They are a current Q-Stage Fellow with 20% Theatre Co. Kat is best known in the Twin Cities as the Producing Director of Lightning Rod, an ever emergent and evolving political flash theatre intensive for artists. They have performed and worked in London, New York, Paris, Stockholm and Minneapolis. Kat graduated from the London International School of Performing Arts in 2009 (now split into two schools: Arthaus-Berlin and Embodied Poetics London). They are also a passionate activist and organizer, with a focus on prison abolition, immigrant detention and fighting for the bodily autonomy of queer and women folk.


Dez Bilges is a nonbinary print maker, painter, and general maker of things, whose work, both public and personal, is greatly influenced by the intersections of community and art that they grew up around in the Twin Cities. Dez is currently pursuing a BFA degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and is expected to graduate in the spring of 2022. They continue to be active in the art community outside of school while they study, and have worked and volunteered as a contract artist with GoodSpace Murals, as an assistant and visiting artist at Minneapolis Institute of Arts Studio Programs, and both as a staff member and volunteer for the annual Mayday Parade and festival workshops hosted by The Heart Of the Beast Theater. Currently, Dez is focused on the remainder of their undergrad degree process, enthralled with the work of author Adrianne Marie Brown, and her viewpoints on community visualizing and vulnerability practices as revolutionary tactics in dismantling systems of oppression.

 


Stayci Bell is a daughter, mother, grandmother, gardener, photographer, actress, puppeteer, healer, leader, and storyteller. Stayci defines herself as an EVERYTHINGist! Her work has been seen on Nicollet Mall, in church basements, and homeless shelters and Guthrie Theater as part of zAmya Theater. She recently premiered a shadow puppetry piece about her daughter’s 1999 SIDS death at Pillsbury House Theater. She also contributed her writing to STREET/LIFE by Leah Nelson as part of Walker Art Center’s Choreographers’ Evening 2019. Stayci Bell is a grower of plants and people.

 


Jay Apollo Simmons (All pronouns) is a non-binary artist, born and raised in the Twin Cities. Their art, whether it be visual, performance or something of neither caliber focus on their intersections of being a Black Queer Person. Currently, they work as an Art Facilitator at Pinwheel Arts, with past credits of performing at Liberation based theatres around Minneapolis such as 20% Theatre and Mixed Blood Theatre. Jay Apollo believes in using art to bridge the gap of Liberation and marginalized people no matter how small the stage or setting.

 

Ticketing Information

To attend this program: RSVP by calling (612) 870-6323 or register online and receive an email with the Zoom link for the program. If you have never used Zoom before, you will be prompted to download the Zoom app or join from your browser. Zoom works best on the Google Chrome browser. If you are having any trouble, contact our visitor experience team at visit@artsmia.org

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Photo Credit: Stayci Bell, taken at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park