Walker Reader

Okwui Okpokwasili

Okwui Okpokwasili is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer living in Brooklyn. The winner of multiple Bessie awards, including for her performance in Ralph Lemon’s Come home, Charley Patton, she performed in Lemon's 2014 work Scaffold Room. She recently toured the world performing Bronx Gothic, her original solo work. In 2017, she premiered her Walker-commissioned work Poor People's TV Room as part of the annual Out There series.

Performing Arts

By Okwui Okpokwasili

"Some New Splintering": Okwui Okpokwasili on the US Presidential Election

“I wake up every day with a new break in my heart, a new scar. And the only comfort that I have right now is that there is a vast community of people I know and do not know, who are also waking up every day with some new splintering.”

Performing Arts

By Okwui Okpokwasili

Beyoncé the Readymade

Okwui Okpokwasili, a performer in Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room, recently sat down with scholar Saidiya Hartman to discuss the iconography and cultural consumption of the black body and, in particular, black women’s bodies, recalling the Venus examined in Hartman’s essay “Venus in Two Acts.”