Artist in Residence: Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán – Intersectional Ecopoetics: A _Yerbabuena_ Reading

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán will be reading, outdoors, excerpts-in-progress from _Yerbabuena_, a multi-genre book and multimedia project. This womanist, queer, transgender, multiracial remapping New York/California, the East/West Coasts, and Atlantic/Pacific worlds is resulting in multimedia: a website, book, performance, and installation. Bodhrán will be sharing work from two intersecting sequences of the collection. The first series of queer/trans Indigenous/multiracial texts remaps ancestral terrains, interweaving narratives of the land and water, multiracial communities, and histories of colonial violence, white supremacy, and environmental degradation. The second explores dynamics in queer/trans men of color relationships, using interpersonal lenses to examine issues of oppression and liberation. Surfacing eco narrative strands, strengthening the centrality of environmental presences and absences, Bodhrán’s residency will deepen the ecological significance of the project.

Name of Artist: Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán
Dates of Residency: May 2 – May 15^th

Residency Plan:
_Yerbabuena_, a multigenre book and multimedia project, is a womanist, queer, transgender, multiracial (Indigenous, African, Latinx, Arab, Jewish) remapping of New York and California, the East and West Coasts, and Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Originally envisioned as a stand-alone text, a braiding of performative, visual, tactile, acoustic, and terrestrial elements is resulting in multimedia: a website, book, performance, and installation. At Bethany Arts Community, Bodhrán will complete remaining poetic and mixed-genre works in two intersecting sequences of the collection. The first series of queer/trans Indigenous/multiracial texts remaps ancestral terrains, interweaving narratives of the land and water, multiracial communities, and histories of colonial violence, whites upremacy, and environmental degradation. The second explores dynamics in queer/trans men of color relationships, using interpersonal lenses to examine issues of oppression and liberation. Surfacing eco narrative strands, strengthening the centrality of environmental presences and absences, Bodhrán’s residency will deepen the ecological significance of the project.

Bio:
Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán is a multimedia artist, activist/organizer, critic, and educator, weaving visual, acoustic, performative, textual, and terrestrial techniques. His work is in 24 nations in the Américas, Africa, the Arab world, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Pacific.

A Tulsa Artist Fellow and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he convened a Movement Research Studies Project, “Decolonial Design, Indigenous Choreography, and Multicorporeal Sovereignties: A Womanist/Queer/Trans Indigenous Movement Dialogue.” An Artists of Color Council Core Member, he collaborates with Indigenous, womanist, and queer/trans people of color communities to create new multimedia movement work.

Bodhrán is author of the poetry/photography collections, Archipiélagos; Antes y después del Bronx: Lenapehoking; and South Bronx Breathing Lessons. His art is exhibited in New York, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Bodhrán is editor of the international queer/trans Indigenous issue of Yellow Medicine Review; and co-editor of the Native dance/movement/performance issue of Movement Research Performance Journal.

Co-founder of the world’s first transgender film festival, Tranny Fest: Transgender & Transgenre Film & Cultural Festival, his work appears in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. He organized/moderated the first transgender people of color panel at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair; and recently organized the world’s first trans Arab roundtable dialogue, forthcoming in Sinister Wisdom.

Bodhrán has received scholarships/fellowships from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, CantoMundo, Radius of Arab American Writers, Macondo, and Lambda Literary.