M. Lamar Performs in Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series

Title: Funeral Doom Spiritual

Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O’Grady ‘55 features six multidisciplinary artists— Dominique Duroseau, M. Lamar, Tsedaye Makonnen, Nyugen E. Smith, Ayana Evans, and Eleanor Kipping —to accompany the exhibition Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And. As one of Wellesley College’s most esteemed alumnae in the arts, the Class of 1955 artist will be celebrated with a spectacular opening and symposium at the Davis Museum, a five-day artist residency at the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and campus-wide events that will reach across all disciplines throughout the semester. The invited artists, who first convened as the performance art cohort at the Lunder Institute for American Art’s 2023 Summer Think Tank at Colby College Museum of Art, will pay tribute to O’Grady’s inspiration and legacy, with performances scheduled for February, March, and May on Wellesley’s campus.

M. Lamar continues to grapple with European forms like surrealism and opera, filtering them through a Black US musical tradition, starting with the spiritual. Indeed much of the inspiration for Funeral Doom Spiritual are African American spirituals that focus on New Testament themes of end-times and the rapture. “I am very interested in reading these doomsday songs through a 21st century lens. I have called these ‘the Doom Spiritual.’” “In the hands of a Wagnerian soprano like Jessye Norman, the spiritual, which is already about soul awakening, transfigures yet again into another form of superhuman soul making.” It is in that spirit that I have composed Funeral Doom Spiritual to call and response songs like “Hush Somebody Calling My Name” “My Lord What a Morning” and “O Graveyard.”

M. Lamar is a composer who works across opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture, and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. Lamar holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Yale School of Art sculpture program, before dropping out to pursue music. Lamar’s work has been presented internationally, at venues including the Rewire Festival in The Hague, Trauma Bar Berlin, Atrium na Žižkově Prague, the Wellcome Collection London, Funkhaus Berlin, Kunstgebäude Stuttgart, The Meet Factory in Prague, Södra Teatern in Stockholm, Warehouse9 Copenhagen, WWDIS Fest in Gothenburg and Stockholm, and the International Theater Festival in Donzdorf, Germany. National presentations include, in New York, National Sawdust, The Kitchen, MoMa PS1, Merkin Hall, Issue Project Room, Participant Inc., the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine,Performance Space 122, the Manhattan School of Music,The Cloisters at The Metropolitan Museum, and the New Museum; and at The Walter and McBean Galleries in San Francisco, Human Resources in Los Angeles, Wesleyan University, and the African American Art & Culture Complex in San Francisco, among others.