In Response: Poetry, Prose & Performance for ‘The Flesh of the Earth’

Celebrating the opening weekend of ‘The Flesh of the Earth’ at Hauser & Wirth, please join us for an afternoon of readings, film and performance at our 18^th Street location in response to the exhibition.  

Readings will include poems by Ama Codjoe read by poet Maya Marshall, and prose selections read by Enuma Okoro. We will also present a special musical performance by Adama Delphine Fawundu and her son, Che Buford.  

Please note that the exhibition is on view at our 542 West 22^nd Street location.  

This event is free. However, due to limited space, reservations are required.  
Click here to register. 

About ‘The Flesh of the Earth’ 
‘The Flesh of the Earth’ is a multidisciplinary exhibition curated by Nigerian-American writer and critic Enuma Okoro. Through work by artists Olafur Eliasson, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Jenny Holzer, Rashid Johnson, Haley Mellin, Cassi Namoda, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Billie Zangewa, the presentation, in the words of Okoro, ‘encourages us all to consider ways of decentering ourselves from the prevalent anthropocentric narrative, to reimagine a more intimate relationship with the earth and to renew our connection with the life-force energy that surges through all of creation, both human and more-than-human. Our human bodies—one of a diversity of created bodies of the natural world—are the primary language with which we dialogue with the earth. By acknowledging that these varied bodies are always in relationship we reawaken our awareness of the quality of those relationships, considering where we may falter or harm, and also deepen our appreciation and recognition of our interdependence with the more-than-human world.’ The exhibition will also include the poetry of acclaimed author Ama Codjoe, who draws both poignant and striking images with her words, articulating the kind of sensuous and imaginative self-reflection that can stir us to rekindle a necessary intimacy with the more-than-human—again, emphasizing the body as the primary vehicle through which to achieve this. 

About Enuma Okoro
Enuma Okoro is a Nigerian-American author, journalist, lecturer, and arts and culture critic. She is a weekly columnist for the Financial Times weekend newspaper. Her column, “The Art of Life,” reflects her broader research and writing interests: how the intersection of art, philosophy, spirituality, ecology and culture, can speak into the human condition and interrogate how we live. Underlying this interrogation is an interest in critical theory, and how we produce, accumulate, and transfer knowledge. And which knowledge systems are recognized.  

About Adama Delphine Fawundu
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist of Mende, Krim, Bamileke and Bubi descent, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her distinct visual language, centered around themes of indigenization and ancestral memory, enriches and expands the photographic canon. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book ‘MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.’ She holds a MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University. 

About Ama Codjoe
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for both the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. In 2023, Codjoe was Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award.

About Maya Marshall
Maya Marshall (she/her) is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Adelphi University. She is the author of All the Blood Involved in Love (Haymarket Books, 2022) and a cofounder of underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. Marshall has earned fellowships from several institutions, including MacDowell and Cave Canem. Her writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in Prairie Schooner, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Best New Poets, the Southampton Review, and elsewhere.

About Che Buford 
Che Buford (he, they) is an NYC-based artist whose work explores creating new narratives within the world of music while engaging in themes of memory and place. They perform as a violinist in various musical settings such as traditional orchestras, chamber music, solo, improvisational performance, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Their own work explores the possibilities of timbre and acoustical phenomena and connects them to elements of place, memory, poetry, and the quotidian. Che holds a degree from Boston Conservatory at Berklee as a presidential scholar in violin performance where he studied with Rictor Noren.