DIANE EXAVIER
EACH BODY REMAINS A MIRACLE
A continuation of Each Body Is a Miracle (Haiti Cultural Exchange, 2017) and Each Body Is (Still) a Miracle (No Longer Empty, 2019), Each Body Remains a Miracle is a play in retreat and an exploration of health and wellness in Brooklyn. Each Body Remains a Miracle reflects on building community in the frame of the exhibition, Brooklyn Utopias: 2020. The project is filtered through the lens of Bernarda’s Daughters, a new play-in-progress that tells the story of five sisters living in the heat of mourning their father, their neighborhood, and what they thought they knew about their lives. Set in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Bernarda’s Daughters is a reflection on a rapidly changing neighborhood through the voices and bodies of people for which it seems there is no longer room.
Life as it has been known is undergoing seismic changes in the midst of COVID-19. The arts landscape is just one small area of this revolutionary shift. Each Body Remains a Miracle is a response to this shift as it re-imagines the play development process to occur in real, lived time in the geography from which the script draws inspiration. In Brooklyn Utopias, this play “in praxis and retreat” ponders what a livable future in Brooklyn looks like in the revealing light of a global pandemic and continual state violence. This imagining of a different kind of Brooklyn future occurs through two modes of practice: the installation of an essay called Florence Delva, and a book-making public project called What Comes from the Garden. Both of these endeavors will inform the ongoing development of Bernarda’s Daughters, which asks: How do we care for our neighbors when the amenities of new construction seduce tenants into exceedingly more private life? How do we live when constantly changing environmental factors present difficult challenges? How do we keep alive what this world is so quick to kill?
Hear Diane speak as a panelist during our Health & Justice for All Webinar on August 21, and meet her at our What Comes from the Garden Book-Making Workshop on September 20.
Each Body Remains a Miracle (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine, dried plants/flowers
Exhibition Photography by Etienne Frossard
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 1 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 2 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 3 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 4 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 5 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 6 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 7 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 8 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
Each Body Remains a Miracle, Page 9 (2020)
Sheets of scorched paper with written text, twine (not pictured), dried plants/flowers (not pictured)
8.5″ x 11″
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker, and educator who creates performances, public programs, and games that invite audiences to participate in a theater that rejects passive reception. With a point of departure located in Caribbean Diaspora, Diane explores what she calls the 4L’s: love, loss, legacy, and land. Intersecting performance and poetry, her work has been presented at The Lark, The Bushwick Starr, Sibiu’s International Theater Festival in Romania, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place, and more. Her writing appears in The Atlas Review and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, amongst other publications. Her play Good Blood received a 2017 Kilroys List Honorable Mention. Her chapbook, Teaches of Peaches was published by TAR Chapbook Series in 2017. Her forthcoming book, The Math of Saint Felix, will be published by The 3rd Thing Press in 2021. As an educator, Diane’s pedagogy focuses on creating spaces of care and self-expression with young people. Some organizations she has worked with include ArtsConnection, Community MusicWorks, New Urban Arts, Providence Public Library, RISD Museum, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Diane lives and works in Brooklyn.
Connect with Diane and see more of her work on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.
