In this dynamic artist talk, Gabrielle Civil discusses her own trajectory as a black feminist performance artist, highlighting key collaborations and inspirations, and promoting black feminist joy as a creative practice. 

Presented by UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and the Department of African American Studies.

Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered fifty performance works around the world, most recently with Wild Beauty at the Velocity Dance Center in Seattle (2020) and in the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (2021). Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), (ghost gestures) (2021) and the déjà vu (2022). Her performance stills and videos have been exhibited in art spaces in California, Ohio, Minnesota, Mexico, and Brazil. A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.