Prayer Lessons
Nicolas Dumit Estevez

Friday, April 27, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Lampman Chapel
Union Theological Seminary
Broadway at 121st Street
New York City

Starting last October, 2011, Nicolas Dumit Estevez attended weekly services at five Christian congregations in the South Bronx. The intention of these visits was to listen attentively to the yearnings, needs, petitions, clamors and praises expressed by hundreds of Bronxites when engaged with neighbors, family members, and even strangers like Estevez himself in the intimate, yet public act of communicating prayer.

Inspired by the potentialities engendered in praying aloud to deal with societal issues, to articulate non-hegemonic histories, and to seek to counteract evil and chaos, on April 27th Estevez will offer an oral account of his experiences praying in and with the South Bronx. The title, Prayer Lessons, references the highly experiential and embodied process upon which Estevez embarked, one in which the participant and the observer in him remained in constant struggle with each other. Prayer Lessons, concieved and delivered by Estevez and directed by Cecilia deWolf, will take place at a space collectively defined as sacred, working chapel.

Nicolas Dumit Estevez is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in performance art and art-and-life experiences. He has exhibited and performed extensively in the US as well as internationally at venues such as Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05 and 07, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, The Pontevedra Biennial, The Queens Museum of Art, MoMA, The MacDowell Colony, The Center for Book Arts, Longwood Arts Gallery/BCA, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace, Princeton University, The Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. Residencies attended include P.S. 1/MoMA, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. In 2012 Estevez will move to Mostar, Bosnia as part of a life and art experience involving two Muslim and two Christian families in this city. He teaches at the Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany. Born in Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, Dominican Republic, in 2011 Estevez was baptized as a Bronxite in the Bronx River.