WILL RAWLS

Using the techniques and technologies associated with photography, cinema, and the stage, Rawl’s [siccer] challenges divisions between the living, the captured, the rehearsed, and the performed.  Experimenting with stop-motion animation, the work features a compilation of still images that have been stitched together to produce moving images depicting a cast of Black dancers in various states of movement. These stop-motion videos are then projected onto chroma green frames suspended from the ceiling, reminiscent of the green screens commonly associated with film production. At once caught, distilled, fragmented, and unfinished, gestures glitch in and out of focus across Rawls’ cinematic scaffolding, which both literally and metaphorically speaks to the invisibility of Blackness in contemporary society. 

The project’s title is inspired by the Latin adverb ”[sic],” used to indicate incorrect spelling within a quotation, and often employed when Black vernacular speech is cited within a standard English text. Through this titular reference, [siccer] illuminates the ways in which Black performance evades white and Western forms of “correction” and classification, suggesting instead a way of being that is both iterative and endlessly becoming, much like the project itself. Within the work, as language and gestures mutate, so too does meaning, in the process revealing meaning itself as yet another construction—as that which both becomes and comes undone. In an image-saturated world wherein our technologies and identities are inextricably intertwined, [siccer] invites audiences to consider the verbal and physical play that marks how Black performance actively eludes capture and speculates on the potential for collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.

Central to the ICA LA presentation is a series of live performances that will take place at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) on April 10 – 12, 2025, presented by REDCAT and ICA LA. The exhibition at ICA LA and accompanying live performances will mark the premiere of [siccer] in Rawls’ home city of Los Angeles, and his most significant presentation in Los Angeles to date. [siccer] was originally commissioned by The Kitchen in New York in partnership with The Momentary (Bentonville, AR), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), On the Boards (Seattle, WA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Chicago, IL).

Will Rawls is an artist and choreographer whose multidisciplinary practice explores the ambiguities of Blackness—its visibility and erasure, its performance and abstraction—to reframe the relationship between language and the body. In 2016, he co-curated Lost and Found, a six-week program of performances and artist projects at Danspace Project focused on the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS on dancers, women, and people of color. Based in Los Angeles, he currently teaches in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles and lectures widely in academic and community contexts. In addition, his work has been exhibited across the U.S., including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.