“I want to build full and rich characters with integrity, brown bodies laboring within a very specific and charged context,” said the choreographer, performer, and writer Okwui Okpokwasili. She explores the roles of African and African American women by creating multidisciplinary performance pieces that seek to shape the shared space inhabited by the audience and performer. Her productions, created in collaboration with acclaimed designer Peter Born, are experimental in form, bringing together elements of dance, theater, and the visual arts.

Okpokwasili inaugurates MoMA’s Studio Residency program, which offers a space for incubation, experimentation, and collaboration. It provides artists with opportunities to research and develop their work, and use the space and resources of the Studio while offering audiences a chance to encounter artworks in development.