Mykki Blanco Headlines After-Hours Event at Jewish Museum Tonight

The Jewish Museum presents the next event in its popular series of after hours events, The Wind Up. Featuring art, live music, activities, and an open bar, The Wind Up will take place tonight, November 20 from 8pm to 11pm. Focused on the exhibition From the Margins: Lee Krasner | Norman Lewis, 1945-1952, the evening features a performance by rapper, performance artist, and poet Mykki Blanco. Multi-gendered and genre defying, Blanco brings hip-hop, electronica, and punk into surprising juxtaposition with high-fashion drag and queer performance. Known for testing the boundaries of hip-hop, in which queer artists remain largely tokenized despite their enormous influence, Blanco exemplifies the way in which the cultural margin is often the most innovative site of artistic production. Similarly, artists Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis innovated "from the margins" of Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s and 50s, and as a woman and an African American, respectively, were often overlooked in mainstream criticism of the time.

The event will also feature a DJ set by P. Morris, guided tours of From the Margins, spin art t-shirt making, an abstract painting station, and an open bar with beer and wine.

Tickets for the November 20 event are $13 in advance; $18 day of event. For further information, the public may call 212.423.3337. Tickets for this program can be purchased online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar/events/2014/11/20/the-wind-up-112014 or through Facebook. The Jewish Museum is located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan.

Mykki Blanco is the stage name of American poet and performing artist Michael David Quattlebaum Jr. Quattlebaum is an interdisciplinary artist who uses contemporary hip hop as a performance medium to express his larger ideas. In 2011 he published his first book of poems "From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys". He also began performing two new projects, performing industrial rock under the name No Fear and glamorous, ghetto-fabulous riot grrrl rap under the name Mykki Blanco. In 2012, Mykki made her grand entrance with the Mykki Blanco and the Mutant Angels EP, featuring cuts like "Join My Militia (Nas Gave Me a Perm)" and "Gay Dog." Later in 2012, Blanco dropped the seminal "Cosmic Angel Mixtape." Dubbed "From Teenage Runaway to Hip Hop Queen" in a New York Times profile, Mykki Blanco was solidified as a young artist whose creative work with hip hop had just begun. In 2013 Blanco released her second work "Betty Rubble: The Initiation" EP. Chris Kelly, in his review for FACT, commented, "For those that have watched and listened to Mykki Blanco's hypercharged evolution, 'Betty Rubble: The Initiation' isn't just a culmination of what she's done - it's a sign of what's to come." Hip Hop Giant XXL wrote, "Blanco's strength is that he sounds like no one else in rap, and his presentation is still more innovative than ever." Blanco will release a new album on October 21, 2014 entitled "Gay Dog Food U.S.A."

P. Morris released his first mixtape, Debut, in April, and he has quickly become known for the experimental soundscape of his collaborations with cutting-edge hip-hop and R&B artists such as Le1f and Kelela.

The Jewish Museum is presenting From the Margins: Lee Krasner I Norman Lewis, 1945-1952 through February 1, 2015. This survey features key 1940s and 1950s works by two powerful painters during a transformative period in American art when both artists were experimenting with innovative approaches joining abstraction and culturally-specific references. Lee Krasner (1908-1984) and Norman Lewis (1909-1979) were major contributors to Abstract Expressionism but as a woman and as an African American, respectively, they were often overlooked in mainstream criticism of the time. The work of Krasner and Lewis has intriguing formal similarities while reflecting each artist's personal background. Krasner's Little Image pictures relate to her childhood upbringing and study of Hebrew, and are today considered significant contributions to Abstract Expressionism. Lewis's Little Figure paintings reference African American cultural heritage, including urban life, Harlem, jazz, and textiles. Beneath the formal elegance of Lewis's paintings runs a characteristically subtle inflection of his lifelong social activism and humanitarian concerns. Both artists' work of this formative period embodied the allover approach characteristic of the style. Yet, rather than the bold, gestural strokes of their peers they focused on smaller, repeated images with self-reflective cultural references. Their paintings-brimming with gesture, image, and incident-are dynamic yet modest in scale compared with the canvases of many of their contemporaries.

Public programs are made possible by endowment support from the William Petschek Family, the Trustees of the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation, William Halo, Benjamin Zucker, the Marshall M. Weinberg Fund, with additional support from Marshall M. Weinberg, the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Foundation, the Saul and Harriet M. Rothkopf Family Foundation and Ellen Liman. Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.