Will Rawls to Present [SICCER] at REDCAT in April

From April 10 - 12, 2025, Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) present multidisciplinary artist Will Rawls with his most recent project, [siccer].

In [siccer], Will Rawls considers the ways in which Black bodies are relentlessly documented, distorted, and circulated in the media. This dance performance, presented together with the artist’s exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), experiments with stop-motion, a filmmaking technique in which still photographs are strung together to produce a moving image. Throughout [siccer]’s live performance, Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste are suspended in an uncanny reenactment of an iconic American film. When the camera’s shutter closes momentarily between photographs, Rawls and collaborators play within the intervals, taking advantage of a gap in surveillance. The project’s title is driven by the usage of “[sic],” a Latin adverb which indicates incorrect spelling within a quotation, often employed to contrast Black vernacular with standard English. 

[siccer] is presented by REDCAT and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) in conjunction with the exhibition Will Rawls: [siccer] on view at ICA LA from April 5 – August 31, 2025.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Will Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. His work probes the boundaries between dance, language, and other media to investigate the poetics of abstraction, blackness, and the materiality of time. Living and working in New York City and Los Angeles, his work has been presented at the MCA Chicago; The Momentary, Bentonville, Arkansas; On the Boards, Seattle; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; the 35a Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil; and Counterpublic 2023, St. Louis, Missouri; among others. Rawls has been awarded numerous residencies and fellowships, including a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship, and he received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in 2021. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; and the journal Dancing While Black. He is currently Associate Professor of Choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles.