Black History Month Celebration - Sadiq Bey Pays Tribute To Wifredo Lam

Performance: February 27, 2009 / 8 pm

Sadiq Bey will offer excerpts from his text The Diaries of Wifredo Lam, a historical fiction account of what went on when Lam, along with Andre Breton, Claude Levi-Strauss and 300 other artists and intellectuals, crossed the Atlantic (24 March, 1940) in the midst of WWII, to escape the persecution of the Vichy regime and the lengthy reach of Adolf Ziegler’s campaign against “degenerate art.”

Wifredo Lam, Cuban born painter and ceramicist (1902-1982), was a seminal figure in 20th century visual expression. Often portrayed as a Surrealist due to his long association with Pablo Picasso, Andre Breton and poet Pierre Mabille, Lam located the synergy of European technique and Afro-Caribbean cultural mythos and created sensation and controversy with an articulation of content that stunned the western art world and influenced scores of young American (north and south) artists.

Originally from Detroit, Sadiq Bey is a performance poet, percussionist, essayist and recording artist living and working in New York and Berlin. Over the past four years residing in Europe, Sadiq has published two books in Germany: SLOW THE EAR, a hand made, limited edition book/box, with the hand silk screened images of Detlef Guenther and Martin Knuesel (Two Suns Productions, Berlin) and Albert Ayler Is Blowing the Horn That Signals the End (Editions Raute, Dresden) in German and English.

In the same period, he has written and recorded for Congo Evidence (Caligola Records, Venice, 2006) with the Italian group Dinamitri with odes to 9/11 and the New Orleans tragedy; the opera Der Kastanien Ball (the Fall of Lucrezia Borgia) with Stefan Winter (Winter & Winter, Munich, 2005); The Othello Syndrome with Uri Caine (Winter & Winter, 2005); Fire In Zeroland, a live recording (Berlin, 2006) with his group Schwartzegeist, with special attention given to the poetry of Sun Ra; a limited edition, handmade box set of film music entitled Variety Show (Ego Bar, Dresden, 2008) and his latest recording venture slow the ear, through a grant from the Berlin Senate, Berlin, 2007-8.