Maya Stovall: Under New Ownership

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) and San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) jointly present Maya Stovall: Under New Ownership, an exhibition of the artist’s innovative performance-based interventions in public life. Under New Ownership includes performance videos from Liquor Store Theater and The Public Library as well as several of the artist’s conceptual sculptures. The exhibition, on view from March 29 through May 5, will culminate on May 3 with Theorem, a live performance newly commissioned by FMCAC.

A self-described “radical ballerina,” Maya Stovall explores questions of human existence, creating works that “vividly juxtapose art and life” (The New York Times) through unannounced performances in contemporary urban spaces. Stovall’s Liquor Store Theatre (2014–present) stages and films performance actions in and around businesses in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood in Detroit. Stovall inserts sequences of performances in an otherwise everyday rhythm, drawing out the people shopping, rushing, and hanging around. The dancers’ centered movement is juxtaposed with Detroiters’ stories, drawing on the energy of the city’s corners, sidewalks, and parking lots to picture this urban fabric in new ways.

Under New Ownership brings together selections from Liquor Store Theatre and the video series Havnepladsen Ballet (2017) and Water City (2018). The exhibition highlights The Public Library (2018–present), an ongoing project performed and filmed in Saskatoon, CA. This new work takes Stovall’s artistic method outside of her hometown to foreground the people making the Saskatoon main library a public crossroads. Through her performance, Stovall elicits views on immigration, local and cross-border economics, narco-cultures, and civic pride. The exhibition also features two new conceptual sculpture series: Untitled (B-F), built from abandoned commercial signage; and the Theorem Sculptures (A-D), objects made with an eye to performance.

Theorem performance
In conjunction with the close of the exhibition, Stovall will present a live performance of Theorem, no.1, commissioned by Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. Distilling the thinking and theorizing behind earlier projects, Theorem is a meditation on the fervor, grit, and craving of the day-to-day urban experience.

Coursing through city streets, Theorem casts a critical and celebratory gaze on fraught spaces and places while investigating the politics of the everyday. With actions referring to text, movement, object, and ritual, a group of artists spin a bizarre world within a world that’s already there. Participating artists include Seycon-Nadia Chea, Bana Kabalan, Mo Soumah, and Todd Stovall. Todd Stovall’s all-new original Detroit electronic music score situates and drives Theorem as a procession of research, wonder, and grind as it winds through the city. Visit fortmason.org/stovall for full details.

Exhibition Information
The exhibition is on view March 29, 2019, through May 5, 2019 at the San Francisco Art Institute’s Fort Mason Campus, located at Pier 2 within Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco, CA. Exhibition hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11am-7pm; Closed Monday-Tuesday. Free admission.

For more information, please visit fortmason.org/stovall