Lorin Sookool- 'Woza Wenties!'

For the opening weekend of Liverpool Biennial 2023, join us for Lorin Sookool’s new commission, ‘Woza Wenties!’ (2023) - a site-specific, autobiographical movement and dance piece at St Luke’s Bombed Out Church. Sookool is one of a number of artists responding to Liverpool Biennial 2023’s theme of ‘uMoya’ by using their bodies as vessels and vehicles for change- bodies that have historically been and often continue to be viewed as objects of desire or servitude.

‘Woza Wenties!’ (2023) uses dance movement to trace and unpack the violent erasure of her Black identity during her schooling in South Africa. During this live offering, Sookool will use dance to examine the complex and nuanced condition of her ‘Colouredness’, a specific experience of Blackness within the South African socio-historical, political and cultural context. Interpreting the dancing body as a previously colonised state, Sookool references colonial and modernist systems of dance techniques and uses improvisation as a means to decolonise the body.

Please note that this offering takes place outdoors and warm, weatherproof clothes are advised. The event will go ahead in the event of light rain, but please do check our social media channels for updates in the events of adverse weather. Contains amplified sound.

Access provision at this event:

If you require any of the below access provisions, please inform Liverpool Biennial prior to the event by emailing [email protected].

• A transcript of spoken word elements will be available for anyone who requires it
• Touch tours and audio description are available
• This event will be seated- if you require any specific seating arrangements please get in touch

About the Artist

Lorin Sookool is a South African dance artist with an interdisciplinary practice encompassing performance, text, sound, photography and film. Improvisation as a decolonial practice has become the foundation of her movement practice and informs the direction of her academic pursuits and facilitation work. Sookool’s work explores complex South African socio-political themes, with a focus on situations of systemic and institutionalized violence through personal trajectories.

About Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial is UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art. Taking place over 14 weeks across the city in public spaces, galleries, museums and online, the Biennial commissions artists from the UK and around the world to make and present work in the context of Liverpool. Liverpool Biennial 2023 ‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’, curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa, addresses the history and temperament of the city of Liverpool and is a call for ancestral and indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing. 2023 marks 25 years of Liverpool Biennial presenting international art in the city and wider region.

Host or Publisher Liverpool Biennial