The Durational Performance of Cut Fruit: Clay+Persimmons

During her time at MoCA Arlington’s Innovation Studio + Store, resident artist Adele 이슬 Kenworthy will explore what natural preservation of unnatural objects look like for archiving memories of matrescence and embodied care.

Join us as we reimagine the art of air drying persimmons (gotgam/hoshigaki) through clay, inherited gestures, and NFC tags.

Make sure to drop in with enough time to explore and create– at least 30 minutes. Participants are additionally encouraged to leave their work at the Studio for the duration of Adele Kenworthy’s residency, and to pick it up at the end, in the week of March 25. 

Follow Adele @themeowingbird |Follow MoCA Arlington @mocaarlington

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Adele 이슬 Kenworthy (she/they) is a 1.5 generation Korean American artist-organizer whose work reclaims Korea’s entangled history of occupation and war while reimagining a heritage we carry in the diaspora. Lisa Lowe in Immigrant Acts wrote “the making of Asian American culture…[includes] practices that are partly inherited and partly modified, as well as partly invented.” Honoring this place of inheritance and invention, Kenworthy uses cocoji floral arranging; bongseonhwa (impatiens balsamina) as a nail dye; and the ritual of cutting fruit as vessels of visible hope – weaving participatory performance, sculpture, and her own family’s archives to retrace these fragmented memories as artifacts in our intergenerational and transnational struggle to remember.

Their work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Corcoran School of Arts and Design (Washington, D.C.); Brentwood Arts Exchange and Towson University’s Asian Arts and Culture Center (Maryland); Art Basel Miami (Florida), amongst others. Kenworthy has participated in Transformer Gallery’s 20th year of their Exercises for Emerging Artists (Washington, D.C.) and artist residencies at the Washington Project for the Arts and the Post-Grad Residency at the Torpedo Factory Art Center (Alexandria, Va). Past collaborators include Monument Lab, The Nicholson Project, 411 Collective, Empower DC, Chinatown Arts Studio.  Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, District Fray, Bmore Art, Washingtonian, NBCWashington, and Fox45 Baltimore.

Kenworthy holds her MFA in Social Practice Art with a focus in public policy at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design (George Washington University), receiving the 2022 Outstanding MFA Award.

Website: www.themeowingbird.com | IG: @themeowingbird