UPDATE:

Katinka Kleijn and Lorene Bouboushian are both unable to make the show, but Cristal Sabbagh and olula negra will perform a duo to open the night up!

Please join us for the May edition of Pleiades Series which focuses on the work and collaboration of womxn and non-binary artists. The night begins with prepared performances and ends with an open-jam! Email pleiades@elasticarts.org if you’d like to join.

Katinka Kleijn

Hailed by The New York Times as “a player of formidable expressive gifts,” Dutch-born cellist Katinka Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she cultivates an exploratory, interactive creative practice at the fertile intersection of improvisation, composition, and collaboration. Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts. Kleijn is a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble. A Drag City recording artist, she has improvised with musicians like Bil

olula negra + Lorene Bouboushian

A child of Cleveland, OH, and a descendant on of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and the American South, experimental sound artist and activist, olula negre, is a cellist, improviser, composer, and visual artist whose work is rooted in their Black American and Latinx heritage, Afrofuturism, and queerness. With a deep commitment to social justice, olula creates and interprets works that embody principles of radical honesty, self-love, and equity. They are enthusiastic about collaborating across genres and mediums and have played alongside dancers, visual artists, actors, and singer-songwriters, including regular collaborations with their brother, writer Bernard E. P. Harris.

Lorene Bouboushian (they/them) is a genderqueer artist exploring lament as a form of critique and query into late capitalist woes. They utilize their experience in various somatic modalities to purposefully place their moving body and shapeshifting voice in uncomfortable, difficult situations. This is an attempt to shoot the quotidian psychological terror and apathy (i.e. the synthesized residue of on-demand streaming services, doomscrolling, virtue signaling, cultural amnesia, "supply chain issues," civil forfeiture, etc.) through the body and back out to all of you. Refrigerated ancestral trauma and white guilt also make a consistent appearance.

The solo sets will be followed by an open jam for all womxn artists. Email pleiades@elasticarts.org to sign up.

$15 - Tickets Available at the Door