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Artists Respond: Tomeka Reid Performs


Chicago-based cellist and composer Tomeka Reid performs an intimate recital (July 7, 2016) in response to Fo Wilson’s installation, Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities. In this performance, Reid expertly combines composed vignettes and spontaneous improvisations for a highly personal reaction to Wilson's work.

Reid is seated on the porch of Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities, a full-scale structure on the grounds of the Lynden Sculpture Garden (on view June 6 through October 30, 2016, and seasonally thereafter). The cabinet is both wunderkammer and slave cabin; it imagines what a 19th-century woman of African descent might have collected, catalogued and stowed in her living quarters. Informed by historical research, Eliza expresses a hopeful African American past, present, and future through a collection of found and original objects.

Eliza's Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities is a collaboration with the Chipstone Foundation. Reid's recital is part of a series of programs sponsored by Chipstone and the Lynden Sculpture Garden, in which four artists/collectives were commissioned to respond to the installation.