'Charity Starts at Home Nadine Ruff'

From the mind of choreographer, dancer, and mixed media artist Arien Wilkerson (Tnmot Aztro) comes a bold new performance, “Charity Starts at Home Nadine Ruff.” Wilkerson’s performance will be presented at The Church on Friday, February 28, at 6 p.m. The daring project reminds artists to remain dangerous while safeguarding their well-being, challenges them to be daring without self-destructing, and pushes them to seek art that activates the world around them. This project has been curated for The Church by Malcolm X. Betts.

Nadine Ruff, Wilkerson’s aunt, a Black transgender woman living with HIV for over 38 years is the fourth Black transgender woman in the country to earn a master’s degree. For the past 20 years, she has been dedicated to the community, following 21 years of recovery from substance abuse. Ruff collaborates with LGBTQ communities, focusing particularly on transgender individuals living with and without HIV/AIDS. “Charity Starts at Home Nadine Ruff” exemplifies the intensity of artists ready to be unleashed into the world. Wilkerson’s intentional simplicity connects deeply with their exploration of danger — not merely as a political commentary on harm or societal oppression, but as a source of power and an embrace of certain darkness.

Wilkerson explores traditional forms and techniques of dance, juxtaposed with boundary-pushing aesthetics, and is joined in the performance by formally trained dancers Mackenzie-Soleil Collyear and Jolie Padilla.

Confronting stories of abuse of power within the art world and general society, the harmful labels placed upon artists of certain appearances, and the societal framing that boxes in the bold, Wilkerson and company deliver a powerful statement about tension and duality in high-society art.

Arien Wilkerson/Tnmot Aztro considers that the complexities within art derive from the alienation of objects, identities, the body, sounds and humans. Their work is rooted in repurposing and redefining meanings of “fine art” and its attachment to colonialism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racism. Their practice articulates epistemology and ontology by producing large-scale performance installations where audiences, public masses, or viewers are submerged within an immersive experience that populates multiple meanings and multiple engines and embodies specific movement vocabularies, choreographic structures, and improvisations. Their discipline spans dance, performance art, digital performance, immersive installation, large-scale projection mapping, and lighting design.

Tickets are $25 ($15 members) at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor.