Keioui Keijaun Thomas (New York)

Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls

Friday 18 October 2024, 10.30pm11.50pm

19 Harford St
Birmingham, B19 3EB United Kingdom
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80 minutes | £15/13

This performance contains nudity and references violence against Black trans women.

A person stands in a sheer purple full length dress on a platform in front of a backdrop of greenery and water. They have long wavy hair and their arms are outstretched.

Christopher Sonny Martinez

A person is standing with their arms and hands raised to the sky. They wear a black belt with red lettering that says ‘FOR SALE’ and is covered in see through plastic. They have strips of gold foil stuck to their body. Behind them are long garlands hanging from the ceiling made of carrier bags.

Keioui Keijaun Thomas. Photo by Christopher Sonny Martinez

A figure is behind long garlands hanging from the ceiling made of carrier bags. The floor is littered with items which look like they are from a party - balloons, glitter, fabrics. The space is bathed in pink and blue lighting.

Christopher Sonny Martinez

A person is crouching down in front of a curtain of long garlands hanging from the ceiling made of carrier bags. There is a bright yellow / golden light shining through the garlands and onto them. There is debris littered across the floor in front of them.

Christopher Sonny Martinez

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In Thomas’s new solo project Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls, a three part film and multimedia performance, Thomas charts a post-apocalyptic geography. Her world is lush and verdant; the artist, bathed in a sky blue dress of tulle, wanders across babbling brooks, oceans, and atop hills of fertile land. Thomas, in landscapes across the United States, sensuously interacts with the land to establish a new relationship with the environment.

Each video includes audio of Thomas reciting her own poetry that journeys from the heart of the club, to the Middle Passage, to star-filled skies – speaking into existence a liberated future for and by trans femmes. Thomas imagines a time where the dolls — a term that means a trans femme so flawless and free they are no longer considered real — have survived a mass extinction. Why are dolls the only ones left? Perhaps, it is because trans femmes (often, but not always) are forged in nocturnality, where beauty and intelligence must learn to supersede time and space.

Thomas reclaims what it means to be black in nature, forging new ways to exist in peace, joy, and healing in relation to the American landscape. The work moves through sound, light, poetry, dance, and music as forms of resistance and healing. The choreography is based on queering landscapes, camouflage, and metamorphosis as modes of survival and transcendence for queer and trans people.

Come Hell or High Femmes is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Created and Performed by: Keioui Keijaun Thomas

Films: 35 mins 6 secs 

Film Credits: Come Hell or High Femmes

Act 1. She From Flurda, but Some Call Ha Florida, 2022. Filmed by Luka Carter & Malcom Thorndike Nicholson, Edited by Keioui Keijaun Thomas 

Act 2. The Last Trans Femmes on Earth: Dripping Doll Energy, 2021. Filmed by Christopher Sonny Martinez, Edited by/with Christopher Sonny Martinez & KeiouiKeijaun Thomas 

Act 3. I Looked Up at the Sky and I, Imagined All of the Stars Were My Sisters, 2020. Filmed by Charles Rice, Edited by/with Charles Rice & Keioui Keijaun Thomas 

Fierce Says

When Keioui was last at Fierce in 2019 with My Last American Dollar, she had us gathered in a now-iconic collective hug in the middle of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Here, she draws together the past, present, and speculated future of Black trans women in America with video and live performance into something remarkably urgent and profound.

Details

Friday 18 October 2024

10.30pm

Birmingham Black Box Theatre