Nova Cypress Black, Tasha Dougé, and Gabriel Ramirez

An image of snippets of words and images and scissors on a wooden floor. The image is treated with a purple wash with the names Nova Cypress Black, Tasha Dougé, and Gabriel Ramirez superimposed. — An image of Tasha Dougé’s sculptural collage *Broken Hands of Time* (2020) in process. Courtesy the artist.

Watch this Commission

The videos in What Connects? by Nova Cypress Black, Tasha Dougé, and Gabriel Ramirez premiered on June 7, 2020. Watch them below.

About this commission

Artists Nova Cypress Black, Tasha Dougé, and Gabriel Ramirez—all teaching artists in The Shed’s DIS OBEY program for young writers and activists—present What Connects?, a collection of poems and images produced in April and May 2020 that critique the inequities on display in America’s management of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For all three artists, this time has been one of reflection on the overlapping emotional, personal, social, and economic effects of the crisis. Working in DIS OBEY’s spirit of protest through creative action, they draw attention to the impact of our society’s reactions to the virus on Black and Brown communities and lives, raising questions about false narratives of capitalism and who or what is considered essential or expendable.

In the poem “Undiagnosed Unknowns,” Gabriel Ramirez shares his personal and wide-ranging perspective on the COVID-19 crisis. Surveying emotions and memories in the social landscape of the pandemic, Ramirez turns his attention from his experience of illness to biased policing, the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black people, and fear as he has lived it. “Who knows,” he asks, “of an answer that will direct us toward hope?” As an answer, Ramirez offers solace in the practice of gratitude, poetry, and care.

Tasha Dougé critiques capitalist notions of time in her multimedia sculptural collage that resembles a clock, documented in the video Broken Hands of Time. For the artist, capitalism uses time as an instrument to further its agenda. This moment of disruption has illuminated the harsh consequences—previously suppressed or overlooked—of participating in this system. One side of the collage showcases images of the joys set aside, the ancestors who disobeyed inhumane societal constructs, and a glimpse of something reimagined; the other side explores the who, what, when, where, and why of what is considered essential to society. Through what the artist conceives of as “unSCRIPTED assemblage,” Dougé advocates for abandoning this capitalist narrative that takes advantage of Black and Brown workers’ lives to keep our economy afloat, asking instead what better future we can create.

In this process video, Tasha Dougé makes her multimedia sculptural collage for Broken Hands of Time, which contemplates how capitalism uses time as an instrument to further its agenda. The beginning of this video features an audio excerpt from PASSING NOTES, an Up Close commission by Troy Anthony and Jerome Ellis.

In April, less than two weeks into New York State’s stay-at-home order, Nova Cypress Black began to write a poem a day as a way to mark not only the time in isolation but also as part of National Poetry Month. In no apologies for my delayed response, Black records readings of five of these poems, each presented unedited as first written. By reacting to emotions, headlines, and the empty niceties of workplace culture (like email salutations hoping “all is well”), Black evokes the longing, loneliness, and loss brought on by the city’s lockdown, as well as the economic stresses and abuses of capitalism’s unrelenting drive to productivity.

Artists

NOVA CYPRESS BLACK

Tasha Dougé

Photo: Brian Brigantti.

Gabriel Ramirez

NOVA CYPRESS BLACK (they/them/her/she) writes, dances, and teaches from a Black queer womanist lens, drawing on contemporary dance training and teaching to compose choreography obsessed with blurring genre, full-body listening, the pursuit of liberation, and honoring of working-class gestures. BLACK’s full-length debut, another goddamn lesbian movie / a choreopoem, was awarded a 2017 Brooklyn Arts Council grant. While a Performance Project @ University Settlement 2020 Emerging Guest Artist, BLACK presented the latest iteration of her new choreopoem, somewheres: a world-in-progress. They’ve received fellowships from Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Poets House, the Poetry Project, Cave Canem, and Willow Arts Alliance. BLACK’s poem, “The Rapture,” won Yemasse Journal’s 2018 Poetry Contest. Other poems have been published in the Shade Journal, Yes, Poetry, Glittermob, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. Emergency Contacts, BLACK’s television pilot was a 2019 Screenwriting Lab Finalist of WeScreenplay’s Diverse Voices Contest. Their short film, Nothing Else to Say, was one of three selected to be produced by BRIC’s 2020 Black Box Filmmaking class.

Tasha Dougé is a Bronx-based multidisciplinary artist and cultural enthusiast. Her body of work activates conversations around women’s empowerment, health advocacy, sexual education, and Black community pride. Dougé believes it is fundamental to her artistic practice to shift narratives around the Black community to depict a more holistic description of who Black people are and what they have contributed. Her art is a tool to exercise expression, enact empowerment, and serve as a bridge to connect and highlight those that may feel excluded and / or overlooked. By creating provocative works that elicit authentic, raw, and, at times, uncomfortable feelings, Dougé aims to spark open and honest conversations that lead to change and reform.

Gabriel Ramirez is an Afro-Latinx poet, activist, and teaching artist. Ramirez has received fellowships from the Conversation Literary Arts Festival, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Watering Hole, CantoMundo, and Callaloo. Ramirez has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre and at the United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, and other venues and universities around the nation. Ramirez was featured in Huffington Post, Vibe magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, the Flama, and Remezcla. His work is available on YouTube and in publications including the Volta, Split This Rock, Winter Tangerine, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and VINYL, as well as ¡MANTECA!: an Anthology of Afro-Latino Poetry (Arte Público Press, 2017), Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books, 2017), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press, 2019), and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press, 2020).

Tasha Dougé would like to thank her ancestors, who whisper in her ears to keep her aligned with her purpose; María Fernanda, who valued and saw what she had to offer over her “inexperience;” the wonderful high school seniors of FDA III in the Bronx, whom she wishes all the best; and last, but not least, her Tribe, whom she loves for holding her.

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