Performance art historian and native South African RoseLee Goldberg introduces this PERFORMA-sponsored discussion with panelists Okwui Enwezor and Deborah Willis. In the past ten years, increasing attention has been given to African contemporary art and, as Goldberg points out, performance is a uniquely important art form because of its physicality, cultural description, and interdisciplinary approach toward creative expression. The panel discusses topics ranging from exploring the intersection of masculinity, the body and the body politic in performance; how fashion, beauty, narrative storytelling, and blackness can be performed through creating an experience of looking; to how even personal style can be a strikingly performative act, as is the case with the sapeurs of the Congo (whose fashion would make any Bourdieu scholar's mouth drop). (52 minutes)

Okwui Enwezor is a curator, writer, and critic. He has curated many international exhibitions, including the Second Johannesburg Biennale and the Seventh Gwang-ju Biennale in South Korea, and was the artistic director of Documenta 11. Until recently, Enwezor was the Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Deborah Willis is an artist, writer, and a leading historian on African American photography. Willis has written and edited many notable publications on African American photography, and is currently the Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she also holds an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies.