February 5, 2025
Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago
An OPC talk with artist Anna Martine Whitehead.
Anna Martine Whitehead is a Chicago-based performance artist who dedicates her time thinking about the relationships between marginalized bodies, systems of violence, and modes of perception. In addition to building performances, Anna Martine writes, gathers, creates still and moving images, and makes space to iter-a-tively address questions around protocols of theater, dance, and institutional knowledge. Using a transdisciplinary approach, they bring their body and others into contact with those instruments historically weaponized for both containment and liberation such as: architecture, language, and technologies of memory-keeping.
Whitehead has developed her craft working closely with Takahiro Yamamoto, Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, BodyCartography Project, Julien Prévieux, and the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, among others. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; REDCAT; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Museum of Modern Art; San José Museum of Art; The Chocolate Factory Theater, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Whitehead and her work have been recognized by United States Artists, the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, the Graham Foundation, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, MAP Fund, Dance/USA, 3Arts, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Martine has written about blackness, queerness, and bodies in action and contributed chapters to a range of publications.