Barak adé Soleil

Barak adé Soleil’s creative practice draws from the African diaspora, queerness, disability culture, and postmodernism to speak to performativity and the labor of the body. Resisting pervasive notions that erase disabled and Deaf bodies from conceptions of the future, adé Soleil seeks to reflect how these communities can and will occupy space as we evolve as a society. In doing so, adé Soleil uses performative abstract markings, signing, and access aesthetics. For Refiguring the Future, adé Soleil has produced site-specific markings that are described as “performative impressions that center disabled and Deaf folx through an intersectional lens.” Also included in the exhibition is a video made in collaboration with Deaf Spectrum, Toronto. The video features Nur Abdulle signing as a linguistic expression of mark-making.­­

Barak adé Soleil is a queer disabled artist of color, who has been part of the contemporary art world since 1991. Recent works include from here to there (2018), for the exhibition Chicago Disability Activism, Arts & Design, 1970s to Today at Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago; and a series of movements (2018), presented at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Toronto and for VAE’s Everyday Series at Raleigh Contemporary Art Museum, North Carolina. Currently based in Chicago, adé Soleil works globally and engages with distinct communities across the Americas, Europe, and Africa.