RESILIENCE
Saturday, July 18, 2026, 7–10 PM
L.A. Dance Project
2245 E Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90021
Free parking available on site, wheelchair accessible
Free admission
Download the Digital Program
Know Before You Go
RESILIENCE presents cutting edge performance art and interdisciplinary work by artists whose practices explore the human condition, having prevailed in the face of adversity by imagining possible futures. RESILIENCE will include re-stagings and new work by Ron Athey, Nao Bustamante, Gabrielle Civil, Johanna Hedva, and Kyoko Takenaka.
Courageous survivors of illness, displacement, migration, or violence, the artists in RESILIENCE place their own bodies at the center of queer visibility, environmental and social justice, and individual and collective agency, boldly defying marginalization, and compelling action through the transformative power of vulnerability.
This series is a companion program to LACE’s performance series ABUNDANCE (2024) and ENDURANCE (2025), all forefronting often invisibilized bodies. RESILIENCE is curated by Selene Preciado, LACE Curator and Director of Programs.
About the Artists
Ron Athey has been making performance works since 1981’s “Premature Ejaculation” (with partner Rozz Williams). The intersection of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with the body modification scene drove his 1990s stage work, the morbidity and strong community of this time begat the “torture trilogy,” theater based works with a cast of eight+ presented widely in the UK, EU, premiering at LACE in 1992, and onwards to ICA London; ExTeresa CDMX, SIGMA Bordeaux FR. The Solar Anus was Athey’s first solo performance in 1998. This 20 minute action was presented widely, its final showing at the Hayward Gallery London in 2006. Other solos include “Self-Obliteration,” and the “Incorruptible Flesh” series, described as the post-AIDS body/Epitaph.
A reclamation of the ecstatic [Pentecostal] voice was fully explored in “The Judas Cradle: An Operatic Duo Drama” (2004-6), developed with Juliana Snapper. “Gifts of the Spirit” with Opera Povera, was installed the Cathedral of Saint Vibiana in 2018. Carmina Escobar was the primi in this work and this kicked off a series of collabs leading up to their current project, “Vox Clamantis.” Two monographs on Athey’s work are 2013’s “Pleading In the Blood” and 2021’s “Queer Communion,” both on Intellect Press, followed by the same-titled survey show at Participant Inc. NYC and ICA LA in 2021. Ron Athey’s archive is at the Getty Center, his visual arts represented by Murmurs Gallery, Los Angeles.
Photo by Liz Miller Kovacs.
Nao Bustamante is a legendary artist, born in the Central Valley of California, who now resides in Los Angeles. Bustamante’s precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, painting and writing. She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the NY MoMA, Sundance International Film Festival, Outfest International Film Festival, The Park Avenue Armory and El Museo del Barrio. Bustamante has influenced a generation of artists. The late scholar Jose E. Muñoz wrote, “I want to call attention to the ways in which Bustamante’s performance practice engages and re-imagines what has been a history of violence, degradation, and compulsory performance. For a female artist of color to engage this field is not only historically loaded, but it is also extremely vulnerable making.” Follow her @naobustamante and @gravegalleryLA for more of everything.
Photo by Lily Kurtz.
Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over fifty original performances worldwide in galleries, theaters, classrooms, and the streets. Recent work includes Black Weirdo School Poetry Club at Crawl Space in LA, Black Weirdo School (Lorde Remix) at the Audre Lorde Symposium in New York, and Black Weirdo School (Pop Up Critique) at PNCA in Portland. She is the author of five performance memoirs, most recently In & Out of Place, which documents her time living/creating in Mexico. Her writing has appeared in New Daughters of Africa, Kitchen Table Translation, Migrating Pedagogies, and A Mouth Holds Many Things. Her performance videos have been exhibited internationally and online. She teaches in community and at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.
Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician from Los Angeles. Hedva is the author of the 2024 essay collection How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, which won the Amber Hollibaugh Award for LGBTQ Social Justice Writing. They are also the author of the novel Your Love Is Not Good, which was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the novel On Hell, which was named one of Dennis Cooper’s favorites of 2018. Their artwork has been shown internationally, most recently in the Seoul Mediacity Biennial, at the HAU Berlin, and in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles at JOAN and London at TINA; and in group exhibitions at Gropius Bau, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Amant Foundation, Performance Space New York, Seoul Museum of Art, the 14th Shanghai Biennial, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Modern Art Oxford, and MASS MoCA. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House (2021) and The Sun and the Moon (2019). Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages. In 2024, they were a Disability Futures Fellow, and they are currently a 2026 USA Fellow.
Wick Simmons is a cellist, composer, performer, and producer whose practice moves between concert halls, experimental theater, nightlife, and installation. Trained classically as a cellist and self-taught as an electronic artist, he reimagines the cello as a focal point where music, sculpture, memory, and performance converge.
His work has been presented at venues across Europe and the United States, among them PLEX Athens, House of Blues Chicago, and The Tank NYC. He composed for Manuel Tiscareno’s runway presentation at Maison de l’Amérique Latine for Paris Fashion Week, and created Exquisite Drones with Dutch Kills Theater Company, inspired by the 1920s surrealist drawing game “exquisite corpse,” with composers inti figgis-vizueta, Conrad Tao, and Jack McGuire. In 2023, he collaborated with Kėkė Søl on THE BUNKER, a multisensory installation of suspended electric cellos rigged by shibari practitioners in a Cold War–era bunker in East Berlin, inviting spectators to play the ropes as an instrument to explore the hidden resonances of erotica. From it came Quiver, a performance sculpture of suspended electric cello and live impact play, commissioned by queer party promoter CircuitMOM for International Mister Leather’s Victory Party. He is a prizewinner of the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition and an Anthony Quinn Foundation Fellow, serving as a recurring judge for the Foundation’s national competition. He has held residencies at the Hambidge Center, The Banff Centre, and Kneisel Hall. He has led workshops on Sound in Performance Practice at Ron Athey’s Darkness Visible II in Athens, and on Creativity in Composition at The Longy School of Music at Bard College.
Kyoko Takenaka is a butoh dancer, musician, photographer, filmmaker, actor, and facilitator based between Turtle Island and Japan. Centering their work in the in-between, they create work around diasporic longing as it relates to cycles found in nature, Japanese mythology, disability justice, queer belonging, and the ethereal realm. Their name means “vibrations of sound child” in Japanese.
Jacob Wolff is an artist, performer, composer and director from Long Beach, CA, currently based in Los Angeles. His work centers on deconstructing the operatic form through solo and ensemble performances, often incorporating improvisation and blending various disciplines. He is particularly interested in what emerges when performers engage with unfamiliar or non-institutional practices, fueling his research into amateurism most notably through celebrity impersonators and into performance traditions that rarely appear in contemporary art spaces. Past pieces include “Ribs” (2023), “My Blue Raspberry” (2024), “Proposal” (2025), and “BEG” (2025). These works aim to explore and dismantle the dynamics between audience and performer, as well as the relationships with the spaces they inhabit. Wolff received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts and has shown work at REDCAT, The Wende Museum, Stomping Ground LA, Electric Lodge, Highways Performance Space, and other galleries and DIY spaces in the greater Los Angeles area.
SUPPORT
RESILIENCE is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Teiger Foundation. Special thanks to our friends at L.A. Dance Project for their support while LACE’s Hollywood gallery is under renovation.
