An Appropriate Reaction presents an exhibition of performance video works by international artist Tabita Rezaire and a series of live events curated by three Women of Colour – Matariki, Hannah Brontë and Black Birds – featuring theatre, performance, music, dance and newly commissioned videos.

The exhibition and events program responds to American writer, feminist and activist Audre Lorde’s 1981 speech ‘The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism’. The title, An Appropriate Reaction, references a line from Lorde’s speech:

“Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.”

As artists and performers, Tabita Rezaire, Hannah Brontë, Matariki and Black Birds have variously engaged their practices to speak to the creative uses of anger in contemporary life, while challenging anger as a reductive, racist and gendered stereotype for Women of Colour.

For An Appropriate Reaction, Matariki, Hannah Brontë and Black Birds have created, curated and perform in one-night live events that respond to the subject of Lorde’s speech from their own perspectives, selecting collaborators to participate through theatre, DJ sets, dance and live musical acts.

Image details: Courtesy of Black Birds, Ayeesha Ash and Stelly G. Photograph by Muna Hamid; Tabita Rezaire, Sorry For Real, 2015, HD video (still), 16min58sec.