John Sims Residency — 2020: (Di)Visions of America
"Sims' exhibition...provides many evocative examples of the artist's masterful manipulation of Confederate symbology, some visual and some audio."
— Tom Mack, FreeTimes, Columbia, SC
John Sims
Based on his Recoloration Proclamation, a 20-year project that confronts Confederate iconography and the associated state of mind, John Sims’ residency will explore themes of white power and symbols, the Coronavirus, and police brutality culminating in a series of stage multimedia performances.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
Wednesday, December 1 at 7PM: Installation Viewing and Artist Talk - Featuring the AfroDixieRemixes Listening Session
AFRODIXIESREMIX: A Listening Session, is a collection of 14 tracks of the song DIXIE in the many genres of Black music: spiritual, blues, gospel, jazz, funk, calypso, samba, soul, R&B, house and hip-hop. This audio-visual work was recently installed at the Confederate Chael as part of the recent exhibition DIRTY SOUTH at the Virginia Museum of Arts.
About AFRODIXIESREMIX, The New York Times wrote, “Composed for minstrel shows, and meant to mock cliches of ‘happy’ Black slave life, Sims doesn’t rewrite the song, but simply records it being sung in a wide range of Black music styles, undercutting, through genius appropriation, its white supremacist punch.”
Thursday, December 2 at 7PM: Film Screening - Recoloration Proclamation
2020: (Di)Visions also features the experimental animation film that tells the story of Recoloration Proclamation by collaging space and time, art and activism and text and visuals to redress one of the most controversial and problematic American symbols - the Confederate flag. This film spans a period of 20 years from Harlem to Gettysburg to gallery to streets to a fantasy post Civil War slave plantation in search of redemption, healing and justice.
Friday, December 3 at 7PM: Live Performance - 2020: (Di)Visions of America
2020: (Di)Visions of America is a multi-media performance shaped by the fear, protest and division caused by the central events of 2020: COVID 19 pandemic, police murder of George Floyd and the pushback on Confederate iconography, memorial and monument spaces.
Saturday, December 4 at 7PM: Live Performance - 2020: (Di)Visions of America
2020: (Di)Visions of America is a multi-media performance shaped by the fear, protest and division caused by the central events of 2020: COVID 19 pandemic, police murder of George Floyd and the pushback on Confederate iconography, memorial and monument spaces.
Sunday, December 5 at 2PM: Film Screening - Recoloration Proclamation
2020: (Di)Visions also features the experimental animation film that tells the story of Recoloration Proclamation by collaging space and time, art and activism and text and visuals to redress one of the most controversial and problematic American symbols - the Confederate flag. This film spans a period of 20 years from Harlem to Gettysburg to gallery to streets to a fantasy post Civil War slave plantation in search of redemption, healing and justice.
Sunday, December 5 at 7PM: Live Performance- 2020: (Di)Visions of America
2020: (Di)Visions of America is a multi-media performance shaped by the fear, protest and division caused by the central events of 2020: COVID 19 pandemic, police murder of George Floyd and the pushback on Confederate iconography, memorial and monument spaces.
John Sims, a Detroit native, Sarasota based multimedia artist, writer, activist creates art and curatorial projects spanning the areas of installation, performance, text, music, film, and large-scale activism, informed by mathematics, design, the politics of white supremacy, sacred symbols/anniversaries, and poetic/political text.
His performance work has been featured across the country including Virginia Museum of Arts, Ringling Museum of Art, Exploratorium The Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception, Houston Museum of African American Culture, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
For the last 20 years, John Sims has been working on the national art-activism project, “Recoloration Proclamation, which explores, re-examines and remixes Confederate iconography as it relates to the African American experience. The project features recolored Confederate flags; a hanging installation in Gettysburg; a 13 southern states Confederate flag funeral; videos; site-specific performances; a play; a collection of experimental films; the music project, “AfroDixieRemixes,” the annual “Burn and Bury Confederate Flag Memorial”; and the outside performance and Kennedy Museum exhibition of “The Proper Way to Hang to a Confederate Flag” at Ohio University. Over the years, this work has incorporated more than 150 collaborators including poets, musicians and artists throughout the country.
His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC News, USA Today, NPR, The Guardian, ThinkProgress, Al Jazeera, Art in America, Sculpture, Science News, Nature and Scientific American. He has written for CNN, Al Jazeera,The Tampa Bay Times, The Huffington Post, Guernica Magazine, and The Rumpus , TheGrio, and Detroit Metro Times.