Paul Brach Lecture Series
MPA (b.1980) has explored a range of meditative, durational, theatrical, and actionist modes of performance to engage “the energetic” as a potential material in live work. Enriched with ritual, her performances and installations critically examine behaviors of power in personal and social spaces. In previous works, she has proposed questions on the global arms race, patriarchy as governance, and the dysfunctional union of art and capitalist commodity. MPA’s work has been exhibited at the Swiss Institute and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico. Her dynamic body of work Directing Light onto Fist of Father (2011), co-curated by Dean Daderko and Alhena Katsof for Leo Koenig Projekte in New York, combined a looping 16mm film and a plaster cast of MPA’s father’s fist in an installation that incited three durational performances. In Trilogy (o) (2012), presented at Human Resources in Los Angeles, NASA sound recordings of dying stars accompanied 31 photographs of Nike war missiles arranged as a moon calendar. A frequent collaborator, MPA is a visible muse for many contemporary photographers, painters, and performers. After receiving a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2013, MPA relocated from New York City to 29 Palms, CA to continue her research of somatic practices.