RACE CARDS, A Participatory Installation By UK-Based Artist Selina Thompson Comes To BAM

UK-based artist Selina Thompson's Race Cards is an individual and immersive approach to examining thoughts about race and identity. Audience members enter a room-one by one-surrounded by 1,000 different questions about race posted on index cards. Each participant is invited to answer one question and write a response. The questions were written by Thompson over an extended period of time, and the work's international exhibitions to date (in the UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and the US) have revealed a global range of attitudes toward race.

Selina Thompson is an artist and performer based in Leeds, England. Her work is playful, participatory, and intimate, focused on the politics of identity and how this defines our bodies, lives, and environments. Thompson has made work for pubs, cafes, hairdressers, restrooms, galleries, and theaters, including SPILL Festival of Performance, The National Theatre Studio, The Birmingham REP, and the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Race Cards was developed as an ongoing research inquiry and as part of a body of work exploring Black British Identity called As Wide and as Deep as the Sea. This overarching exploration has also led Thompson to build and tour a giant 'tumble-weave' of hair, made from extensions and weaves, across the UK with Dark and Lovely-an exploration of the complex social debate surrounding Black hair. The series also includes salt., a retracing of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle from the UK, to Ghana, to Jamaica and back on a cargo ship. Thompson's other current works include performances and installations The Edible Woman and The Job Centre Project.

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