Making Do

RedLine continues its year of celebrating women in art this summer with a show that complements the sculpture retrospective The Material Body, which is on view at MCA Denver through July 13. Senga Nengudi: The Performing Body, curated by Elissa Auther and opening tonight at RedLine with a reception from 7 to 10 p.m., will cover another facet of the African-American artist’s vast body of work by delving into her improvisational side, which melds movement with her signature sculptural works, which are created off the cuff from everyday materials such as pantyhose, sand and masking tape.

The Performing Body will kick off with a couple of live performances, including “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” a collaboration between Nengudi and local performance artists and audience members, who will be invited to try on a pair of shoes belonging to someone else. “The premise behind it is that it really is different to walk in other peoples’ shoes, which brings up the life-experience conversation,” explains RedLine director Louise Martorano, who adds that Nengudi, who got her start decades ago with Chicago’s Studio Z collective, fits into the gallery’s year-long objective as a groundbreaking artist who was one of the first to break barriers in the art world. “It was an L.A.-based group of artists who were interested in taking art off the walls and into the street,” she notes, “in a time when it was hard for both African-Americans and women to get into museums.”

The Performing Body remains on view at RedLine, 2350 Arapahoe Street, through July 20. Admission is free; for more information and a preview of what’s still to come in the gallery’s She Crossed the Line 2014 exhibition series, go to redlineart.org.
Fri., June 6, 7-10 p.m.; Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: June 6. Continues through July 20, 2014