The Kitchen Presents Will Rawls’ exhibition [siccer], October 16–November 22, 2025

In Its New York City Premiere, [siccer] Disrupts the Frame of Black Representation and Unsettles the Boundaries Between the Rehearsed and the Improvised

The Kitchen presents Will Rawls: *[siccer]* (October 16–November 22, 2025) at The Kitchen at Westbeth (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft). In conjunction with the exhibition, [siccer] will feature live performances at Performance Space New York (November 20–22, 2025), co-presented by Performance Space New York and L’Alliance New York’s Crossing The Line Festival. For many decades, both The Kitchen and Performance Space New York have propelled culture forward as downtown institutions in New York City, supporting experimental artists that push boundaries across mediums. This collaboration marks the long-awaited New York premiere of this career-defining work eight years in the making.

Will Rawls, whose multidisciplinary practice is rooted in the tension between movement, language, and image, invites audiences to perceive the body’s many forms of communication. [siccer] draws from the Latin adverb [sic]; a term used in text to mark errors, often when quoting Black vernacular within the framework of standardized English. Rawls turns this conflict on its head to illuminate the verbal and physical play of Black performance as something that eludes capture on screen and in language—and that speculates on potential strategies for narrating the world, uncorrected.

At The Kitchen at Westbeth, Will Rawls: [siccer] features a two-channel video installation that engages the filmmaking technique of stop-motion animation. The work stitches together sequences of still images to create motion pictures set within a chroma-key green scenic environment—exposing tools used in film production to manipulate or decontextualize a subject’s background. In this context, Rawls reflects on the persistent documentation, distortion, and circulation of Black bodies in lens-based media.

The performances at Performance Space New York were created by and star longtime darlings of New York’s dance and performance community. Will Rawls performs in [siccer] alongside Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste. Throughout the work, the performers are suspended in stop-motion film shoot. When the camera’s shutter closes momentarily between photographs, Rawls and collaborators play within the intervals, taking advantage of a gap in surveillance.

Both the exhibition and performance fuse photography, cinema, and performance to challenge the boundaries between the living and the captured, the rehearsed, and the improvised. As language mutates and movement dissolves and reassembles, [siccer] asks: What does it mean for Black performers to resist capture? What new ways of seeing—and being—become possible in that refusal? In an ever-lasting cultural moment defined by the entanglement of Blackness and spectacle, [siccer] offers a speculative space to imagine alternative ways of being that refract and reshape the scene of spectacle-making—a film shoot. With a visual language that feels at once suspended and in flux, the work speaks powerfully to the complex visibility of Blackness in an image-saturated, surveillance-driven world.

The exhibition and live performances accompany Rawls’ book, soon-to-be published by Wendy’s Subway, and an album of music that will be released on vinyl and on sale at The Kitchen and Performance Space New York in November. Published by the artist, [siccer the album] includes original improvised and composed works created for the exhibition and performances of [siccer] with Rawls’ collaborators, Holland Andrews and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste.

The exhibition Will Rawls: [siccer] at the Kitchen is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator, and Angelique Rosales Salgado, Assistant Curator. Production by David Riley, Production & Exhibitions Manager, and Tassja Walker, Production Supervisor. The live performance of [siccer] is organized by Performance Space New York and co-presented by L’Alliance New York’s Crossing The Line Festival.

About Will Rawls

Will Rawls is an artist and choreographer whose multidisciplinary practice explores the ambiguities of Blackness—its visibility and erasure, its performance and abstraction—to reframe the relationship between language and the body. In 2016, he co-curated Lost and Found, a six-week program of performances and artist projects at Danspace Project focused on the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS on dancers, women, and people of color. Based in Los Angeles, he currently teaches in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles and lectures widely in academic and community contexts. In addition, his work has been exhibited across the U.S., including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven.

Funding Credits

The Kitchen’s programs are made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, The Kitchen Global Council, Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council, as well as through generous support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and in part by public funds from the Manhattan Borough President, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The Kitchen acknowledges the generous support provided by the Collaborative Arts Network New York (CANNY). As a coalition of small to mid-sized multidisciplinary arts organizations, CANNY is committed to strengthening the infrastructure of arts nonprofits throughout New York.

About The Kitchen

Founded in 1971 as an artist-driven collective, The Kitchen today reaffirms and expands upon its originating vision as a dynamic cultural institution that centers artists, prioritizes people, and puts process first. Programming in a kunsthalle model that brings together live performances, exhibitionmaking, and public programming under one roof, The Kitchen empowers its audiences and communities to think creatively and radically about what it means to shape a multivalent and sustainable future in art. The Kitchen seeks to cultivate and hold space for wild thought, risky play, and innovative and experimental making, encouraging artists and cultural workers alike to defy boundaries and sending them into the world to remake art history and catalyze creative change.

Among the artists who have presented significant work at The Kitchen are Muhal Richard Abrams, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Robert Ashley, Charles Atlas, Kevin Beasley, Beastie Boys, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Julius Eastman, Philip Glass, Leslie Hewitt, Darius Jones, Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones, Devin Kenny, Simone Leigh, Ralph Lemon, George Lewis, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sarah Michelson, Tere O’Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Sondra Perry, Vernon Reid, Arthur Russell, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Spiegel, Talking Heads, Greg Tate, Cecil Taylor, Urban Bush Women, Danh Vō, Lawrence Weiner, Anicka Yi, and many more.

Website: thekitchen.org Instagram: @TheKitchen_NYC

About L’Alliance New York

L’Alliance New York is an independent, not-for-profit organization committed to providing its audience and students with engaging French language classes and audacious multi-disciplinary programming that celebrates the diversity of francophone cultures and creativity around the world. A welcoming and inclusive community for all ages and all backgrounds, L’Alliance New York is a place where people can meet, learn, and explore the richness of our heritages and share discoveries. L’Alliance New York strives to amplify voices and build bridges from the entire francophone world to New York and beyond.

About Crossing The Line Festival

Crossing The Line is a citywide festival that engages international artists and New York City audiences in artistic discovery and critical dialogue to re-imagine the world around us. Crossing The Line is produced by L’Alliance New York in partnership with leading cultural institutions.

Press Contact for The Kitchen: Gilberto Rosa-Duran, Communications Manager, gilberto@thekitchen.org and Gregory Werbowsky, VP, Arts & Culture at PURPLE, gregory.werbowsky@purplepr.com

Press Contact for Performance Space New York: Christofer Medina, christofer@performancespacenewyork.org

Press Contact for L’Alliance New York: Michelle Tabnick, michelle@michelletabnickpr.com

Contact for Will Rawls: Margaret Knowles, Studio Director, studio@studiorawls.com