Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/making-rituals-workshop-with-amartinez-part-3-featuring-cristal-sabbagh-tickets-196207270227

Making Rituals is a series of in-person workshops hosted and facilitated by A.Martinez which serve as generative happenings for collective research for host, guests, and participants alike. The intention of the study group is to spark conversation around returning to our own authentic rituals and reframing our lives around ritual as essential to our survival and connection to the world—past, present, and future.

Each gathering focuses on a theme that contains rituals—Part 1: Things / Remember (Oct 21), Part 2: Food / Grow (Oct 28), and Part 3: Body / Move (Nov 11). A.Martinez will interview and facilitate a discussion with a different guest for each workshop to learn about their work and their rituals, and the highlights and challenges they face within that work. Participants will then be invited for small group discussion and exercises created and led by A.Martinez and the invited guest surrounding the theme.

November 11: Body / Move featuring Cristal Sabbagh

Green Line Performing Arts Center (Harris Studio), 5:00-6:30PM

As physical bodies, we are always moving. At this workshop, we will speak with a movement practitioner who will help us look at these aspects of our everyday life and lead us in an activity using our bodies.

Cristal Sabbagh’s performance practice, rooted in improvisation and Butoh, walks a line between the everyday, the divine, the personal, and the political. In embodying in her art transformational memories while simultaneously celebrating pop culture and the experimental, she challenges power structures and awakens viewers’ senses. Working both in a solo capacity and with collaborators, Sabbagh is equally attuned to individual perspectives and collective structures. In various configurations, these collaborators have regularly engaged in improvised performances, opening up new avenues for Sabbagh’s material and conceptual exploration.

Her practice also looks outward to portraits of the world around, taking the forms of traditionally drawn portraits, figurative ceramic sculptures, and nontraditional portraits on ceramic mugs. Sabbagh labors over each piece, that act as homage and memorials and are a resistance to white-supremacy. Not only do these works infuse the user’s everyday coffee and tea rituals, but their ceramic forms will stand the test of time, potentially outliving the user by thousands of years and leaving traces of how we lived recorded by Sabbagh’s hand.

A.Martinez is a poet, visual artist, mother, and community and arts organizer living in Chicago. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Writing Program, and is the proud recipient of the 2019 3Arts Make a Wave Award, and the Chicago Artist Coalition 2021 SPARK grant. Her work explores identity, memory, spirituality, and the body. In addition to her creative practice, A.Martinez produces community and cultural events. She does a variety of production, development, and project management work for music and nonprofit organizations. She also curates her own independent events that center on, and for, mothers of color in the arts.

You can find more information about her work at https://www.alyssahydemartinez.com/

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COVID safety event info and University of Chicago policies: All visitors aged 12+ attending public events with fixed audience seating inside of a University of Chicago building must provide proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of event, or a positive COVID-19 test within 14-90 days of event and affirm no symptoms. UChicago faculty, students, and staff may present their UCID as proof.

This convening is open to all invitees who are compliant with UChicago vaccination requirements and, because of ongoing health risks, participants are expected to adopt the risk mitigation measures (masking and social distancing, etc.) as advised by public health officials or to their individual vulnerabilities as advised by a medical professional. Public convening may not be safe for all and carries a risk for contracting COVID-19, particularly for those unvaccinated. Participants will not know the vaccination status of others and should follow appropriate risk mitigation measures.

Indoor capacity is restricted at all Arts + Public Life buildings. Detailed information on the University of Chicago health and safety guidelines are outlined at https://goforward.uchicago.edu.