This is The Day: Li(sa E.) Harris

This is the Day

Li(sa E.) Harris

Lawndale Art Center

FEBRUARY 15, 2024 - APRIL 8, 2024

About The Exhibition

Li’s practice focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit, and place. She uses voice, theremin, electronics, movement, improvisation, meditation, and new media to explore healing in performance and everyday living. Often, her projects unfold over time in acts. For This is the Day, Li assembles photography, analog technology, video, and resonant sounds that reflect a survey of her past artistic practice, especially her work Onshore Trilling: What to Do When the Earth

Sings the Bruise and Please Have a Seat.

Li’s performance Onshore Trilling simultaneously references Houston’s offshore drilling industry—key to its economy as a world capital for oil and gas—and the history of the Blues in the Deep South, which, as Harris shares, were invented by “enslaved persons, previously enslaved persons, and their descendants, like me.”

“Trilling” is a musical term describing the fast oscillation between two pitches; it is vibration and energy. This is The Day includes relics and electronics from Li’s family, fused together to fill the gallery space with frequencies that erode in relation to the respective battery life of each object. Overhead, perforated sails mimic the sky, reminding us of ever-present cosmic constellations which orient our earth and dream spaces.

About The Artist

Li(sa E.) Harris (“Li”) is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, filmmaker, writer, singer/songwriter researcher and educator from Houston. Throughout her career, she has received numerous accolades, most recently the 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and 2021 Dorothea Tanning Award in Music/Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Li is trained as a classical voice/opera singer and performs across a wide range of genres and mediums. She is a certified facilitator of DEEP LISTENING®, the sonic philosophies of composer Pauline Oliveros.

Li is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston Texas. She wrote, directed and produced Cry of the Third Eye: a new opera film in Three Acts, a decade long meditation on legacy, loss, and gentrification in Third Ward Houston. With Studio Enertia, Li created and curated Houston’s inaugural Free Time Flow Festival at MacGregor Park, celebrating the intersections of basketball, electro-acoustic music and improvisational performance. Studio Enertia produced and instated Pauline Oliveros Day at Discovery Green Houston, curated by Li.

This is the Day: Li(sa E.) Harris Exhibition Checklist

John M. O’Quinn Gallery (Main Gallery)

01. Pythia Sound Sculpture, 2018

Cassette tape, found synthetic braids, wig lace, wig glue, and varied adornments

02. Pythia is a Black Girl’s Name, 2018 Graphic score in pencil

03. Look What We Did With Jesus, 2014 - 2021

Mixed media, photographs, paint, grandmother’s handwriting, notebook paper, and text of scriptual study

04. Cry of the Third Eye, Act I, 2011 New opera film (duration: 29:00)

05. Cry of the Third Eye, Act II: Children of the Lost, 2015 New opera film (duration: 30:00)

06. Cry of the Third Eye, Act III: The Last Resort, 2019 New opera film (duration: 30:00) window

Photographs on paper and found frame Exhibition

07. Prop from Cry of the Third Eye, Act I, 2011

08. Stills from Cry of the Third Eye, Act III: The Last Resort, 2019 Inkjet prints on paper and canvas

09. Black Eyed Penny, 2018 - 2024

Family crockpot, collection of copper pennies, glue, documentation of site-specific performance (duration: 18:00)

Featuring: Li(sa E.) Harris and Autumn Knight Video: Robert Pruitt

10. Observatory, 2024 Ceremonial fabric for performance

Exhibition Checklist continued

11. Please Have a Seat, 2020 - 2024

Borrowed chairs from Presbyterian School of Houston

12. Photojournal of Site-Specific Public Performances, 2020 - 2024

Digital inkjet prints

13. Skyscape, 2021

Framed photo

14. D.R.E.A.M.= A Way to Afram, 2023

Digital projection and sound of installation previously shown at DiverseWorks

15. Renovation, 2021

Digital projection and sound

16. For Se(a)er, 2024

Industrial commercial mixer, flashlights, zip ties, rubber bands, brass chandelier, chain, electrical wire, and sound

Exhibition Checklist continued

17. La Capitana, 2024

Vintage coat, portable radio, and assortment of matriarchal adornments

18. Assemblage of Artifacts from Ancestral Home, 2024

Varied materials displayed on columns

19. Sound Sculpture at Rest, 2023

Metal chime, paint, coils, wood, and rope

(duration: 5:30, 1:00 rest)

Voices: Lisa E. Harris (descendant), George & Alvin Harris (ascendants)

Piano: Stephanie Scott

Sound specialization: Mark Speer

20. Ascendance, 2024 Plastic, light, text, and photographs

21. Hymn Helix, 2024 Baptist hymns, sound collage, and sound design

Cecily E. Horton Gallery (2nd Floor)

Mission

Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.

About

Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances.

Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston.

Supporters

Lawndale Art & Performance Center receives generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc.; the Garden Club of Houston; Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; The John M. O’Quinn Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the federal ARP Act; Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; The Rose Family Foundation; the Scurlock Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; the Vivian L. Smith Foundation; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico.

Funding for Lawndale’s exhibitions is provided by presenting sponsors John Bradshaw, Sara and Bill Morgan, and Scott Sparvero; with additional support from sponsors Mara and Erick Calderon, Jereann Chaney, Alexa Clements, Piper and Adam Faust, Mary Catherine and Bailey Jones, Emily and Ryan LeVasseur, Meghan Miller and Jeff Marin, Adrienne Moeller, Winnie and Nic Phillips, Teresa Porter, Aaron Reimer, Stephanie Roman, Nicole and Joey Romano, and Jessica and Blake Seff; and generous gifts from the Friends of Lawndale.

This is the Day and Onshore Trilling: What to Do When the Earth Sings the Bruise are supported in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation.