MOAD MDC Presents Its First Event Of 2018 With Karen Finley

Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College (MDC) is pleased to announce Unicorn Gratitude Mystery, a gripping and uproarious one-woman performance by pioneering artist Karen Finley. Created during 2016's unprecedented presidential election campaign and updated for the present moment, Unicorn Gratitude Mystery delves into American politics and culture as only Finley can, with dark humor, piercing insight, and take-no-prisoners portrayals of hypocrisy and malfeasance. Unicorn Gratitude Mystery will have one performance at the Miami Light Project at The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse onFriday, Jan. 12, at 8 p.m.

"Unicorn Gratitude Mystery takes on citizenship, gender disparity and abuse of power. The individual price of public relationships at the price of privacy becomes divisive with searing psychosexual dynamics of wit and seething revelation. The performance explores magical beings, aggressive thankfulness, and collective intimacy through Shakespearean family nation dramatic traumatics. This is an experimental nonlinear poetic text that creates a jolt of intuition, analysis and unnatural disaster of the human kind," wrote Karen Finley.

Karen Finley is a New York based artist whose raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Her performances have been presented at Lincoln Center, NY; the Guthrie Theater, MN; American Repertory Theater at Harvard; the ICA, London; the Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago; and the Bobino, Paris. Her artworks are in collections including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She has received numerous awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim, two Obies, two Bessies, Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year, NARAL Person of the Year, and NYSCA and NEA Fellowships.

In 2016, Unicorn Gratitude Mystery ran for several months in NY and Chicago. Finley recently collaborated with Bruce Yonemoto on Far East of Eden, a video about immigration policy, which was screened at The Museum of Modern Art in 2017. That same year, Finley was included in Documenta in Athens. Her new book, Grabbing Pu ssy, forthcoming from OR books, examines the psychosexual politics of America today. Ms. Finley lectures internationally and is currently an Arts Professor in Art and Public Policy at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Unicorn Gratitude Mystery is the first event in the 2018 schedule of Living Together, an exciting cross-disciplinary series of programs that will galvanize Miami audiences with thoughtful and challenging performances and exhibitions that draw from art, music, theater, politics, and poetry. Spread across the city at a wide array of venues, the series features performances, exhibitions, film and video screenings, readings, talks, and workshops that will reflect the cultural, social, and political realities of how we live now. Living Together seeks to find new ways to think about civic space and citizenship, to instigate actions and conversations that may help us to reimagine our cities and our lives.

Living Together will take place at various sites across Miami from January to September 2018 and will include works by 17 of the most acclaimed national and International Artists, art collectives, musicians, and writers. Events in the series will be produced by MOAD MDC in collaboration with a range of other Miami institutions, and most events will be free and open to the public. The curators of Living Together are Rina Carvajal and Joseph R. Wolin, an independent curator based in New York.

Tickets at MOAD MDC website at http://www.mdcmoad.org/.

Unicorn Gratitude Mystery is produced in partnership with the Miami Light Project at The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse. Living Together is made possible by the generous support of Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council.

Please visit the MOAD MDC website for updates and a full schedule of events: http://www.mdcmoad.org/.

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