Image: Drill Meditations, Nola Hanson and Nicky S. Smith, On Air Fest, Brooklyn, NY, 2018.
A 2-part event happening on Saturday, February 1, in the Diego Rivera Gallery:
About the Event
How to Explain Belief is led by artist and Trans Boxing founder, Nola Hanson. Through a performance-lecture and workshop, Nola will use boxing as a framework to explore ritual, community, performance, and embodiment. By activating the gallery space as the training location, Nola constructs a hybridized site that recontextualizes the physical activities that occur within it.
Workshop participants are encouraged to attend the performance-lecture. After the performance-lecture, people who are not participating in the workshop will be asked to leave the space. There will be no audience for the workshop: only primary participants and the facilitator (Nola Hanson) The boxing workshop is exclusively for trans and gender variant people. Participants are asked to wear comfortable clothing/footwear that is appropriate for exercise.
This event is free and wheelchair accessible (ramp located at Chestnut Street entrance). To register for the boxing workshop, please fill out this form.
About Nola Hanson
Nola Hanson (b. 1991, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is a trans artist whose practice centers the role of embodiment in contemporary social systems. Nola received their BFA in Painting and Art Criticism from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2014. They started boxing at the New Bed Stuy Boxing Center, a community-run boxing gym in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn in 2015. In 2017 they founded Trans Boxing, an experimental boxing club that prioritizes participants of various identities who have limited access to boxing training.
Nola's practice includes independent work as well as collaborative socially engaged projects, and has been shown in New York, Chicago, Portland, and Milwaukee. Nola is currently an MFA candidate in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University.
Influential Texts/Recommended Reading:
