Image credit: Courtesy of Kledia Spiro
Kledia Spiro with Trousseau in SMFA at 150: Looking Back
Dates: July 28 to November 8 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday September 17, 2026
Location: SMFA at Tufts, 230 the Fenway, Boston, MA, USA
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (now SMFA at Tufts), Tufts University Art Galleries is thrilled to present a look back at the art school’s history—as told by alumni artists and curators.
Performance, Pedagogy and Lineage:
This section of the exhibition features the work and far-reaching impact of three of the SMFA’s most prolific performance art practitioners and educators: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (b.1959), Danielle Abrams (b.1968-2022), and Marilyn Arsem (b.1951). Archival research, oral histories, images and video will highlight the expansive and expressive modes of their performances and teaching philosophies. We place the work of each former faculty member in conversation with the work of the artists they influenced during their graduate years at SMFA. They include Faith Johnson, Angela Counts, Andrea Sherrill Evans, Helina Metaferia, Allison Rodriguez, Kirk Amaral Snow, Sarah Hill, and Kledia Spiro. This section will also include “Jackson Pollock: Two Figurative Alternatives,” a video work by Dell Marie Hamilton and an homage to painter Jackson Pollock and art historian Susan Denker, who also taught at the SMFA. The video inserts Hamilton’s body into the received histories of modernism and performance art, and points to Amelia Jones’s book, “Body Art/Performing the Subject,” which Arsem assigned to Hamilton during her MFA program.
Trousseau is a two channel video installation part of a four channel large-scale sculpture installation titled THE WEIGHT featured at the Boston Center for the Arts, Cyclorama in 2015..
The artist has personally welded a steel barbell with specific seats for each parent. The seats are configured as throne-like/double headed eagle puzzle pieces that can fit together side by side or on top of each other when taken off the barbell.
Her work alludes to Albert Camus Myth of Sisyphus where one's fulfillment comes from the process of struggling and failing.
Weblink: https://artgalleries.tufts.edu/exhibitions/260-smfa-at-150-looking-back
https://www.klediaspiro.com/projects#/trousseau/
Image credit: Detail from Better Angels (2026) featuring Mobius member Sandy Huckleberry performing the role of “Pete, Head of Security”. Photo by Mel Taing
Heather Kapplow: Better Angels
Dates: Friday August 21 - Saturday August 22, Times TBC
Location: 100 Atlantic Ave, Boston, MA 02110, USA
Better Angels, a traveling large-scale public artwork by Mobius member Heather Kapplow, and curated by Mobius member Jasper A Sanchez, will pop up across Boston’s iconic parks, plazas, and public spaces from June 2026 through October 2026.
Better Angels is a playful invitation for visitors to envision their best selves with a fellow participant as witness, offering moments of grace when we fall short. With large, campy inflatable clouds, golden gates to heaven, and a cast of “angels” performed by local artists (including Mobius member Sandy Huckleberry!,) Better Angels humorously yet earnestly reminds visitors that democracy has always required us to navigate personal and collective aspirations, along with the challenges that keep us from them, and to work together toward ideals beyond our lifetimes. See web link for event hours.
Weblink: https://www.thetriennial.org/heather-kapplow
Yumiko Yoshioka: Body Resonance and Butoh Workshops
Dates and Times: Friday August 28 (5:30 - 8:00 PM), Saturday August 29 (10:30 - 2:30 PM), and Sunday August 30 (10:00 - 1:00 PM)
Location: SOMart @Hive, 561 Windsor St, 4th Floor, Somerville, MA, 02143 USA
Workshop Cost: ALL 3 Days: $85 OR Buy individual days: Friday : $25, Saturday: $40, Sunday: $30
Yumiko Yoshioka is a Japanese Butoh dancer and choreographer. Yumiko is a former member of Ariadone, the first female Butoh company, which was founded by Ko Murobushi and Carlotta Ikeda in 1973. In 1989 she started to develop and teach her own form of bodywork. The approach became a pillar of her career as a reflection of her profound understanding of the importance of deepening consciousness of the body, not only in order to dance and express, but also to illuminate our daily life, opening ourselves to the deeper layers of our inner world and rediscovering a subtle beauty in each moment. The strength of this perception led her to create her own method of bodywork, called “Body Resonance” more about my work www.yumiko-yoshioka.com
Body Resonance – based on Butoh and Organic Movement
The main focus of this workshop is conscious research of our body/mind/soul unification, so we can deeply enjoy the intrinsic process of metamorphosis in the spirit of dance. Through a continuous exploration of our past collective memories, we can strike a vein of abundant creative resources, enriching the essence of our life. The body is a receptacle of time.
Body resonance is a key to opening up the doors of an ever-changing world inside and outside of ourselves, which helps the body to unfold its secrets, holding them up until they shine and tremble. Everything is in resonance with each other. Through a dialogue with our body, we can learn to be moved by inner and outer forces, thus realizing we are a part of the Universe. A dance of metamorphosis inevitably appears.
Workshop Content:
Organic Movement (release exercises), inspired by Noguchi Taiso (Gymnastics), Taichi and Yoga such as figure 8, waves, water ball rotation, hanging body,
Breathing exercises AUN
Dynamic training for the flow of energy
Butoh-related work (sensitization, combination of image and movement with antenna exercises, such as animal, insect, snake, witch and fairy, the creatures inside us, walking, dialogue with a partner etc)
Structured improvisation and choreography
To sign up for the workshop, email Ellen Godena at: egodena@gmail.com
Performance: "100 Light Years of Solitude"
Date and Time: Saturday August 29, 2026, 7:00 to 8:15 pm
Location: 561 Windsor St, 4th Floor, Somerville, MA, 02143 USA
Tickets: https://somartspace.org/events-2/performances-events/
Following Yumiko Yoshioka’s solo Before the Dawn, this is the second part of her trilogy “100 Flowers” inspired by Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to explore a state of solitude Yumiko dances the life of a unique creature, born on a planet 100 light years away from ours. Imagining that this creature is the only one of its species on that planet, it enjoys unfolding its life until it realizes its destiny: to exist in solitude.
Image credit: Arsem and Bean in Cumbria, 7/26. Photo by Marilyn Arsem, Anne Bean and Peter Fink.
Marilyn Arsem in Found Luggage In Any Case
Event Title: Found Luggage In Any Case
Date and time: Friday, August 7, 2026, doors open at 6:00pm, performance from 6:30pm to 8:30 pm.
Location: Peckham at The Old Waiting Room, Station, Peckham Rye, Station Way, London SE15 4RX, UK
Cost: Tickets £15/£18 (£10 Low Wage, £20 OTD
Future Ritual are glad to host Found Luggage In Any Case, a special performance dialogue between artists Marilyn Arsem and Anne Bean.
Marilyn Arsem is galvanized by what emerges from individual consciousness. Anne Bean is excited by the intersection of consciousnesses.
Their work will take place in ‘The Old Waiting Room’ in Peckham. They will be given suitcases with found objects. Marilyn and Anne won’t know until they begin the performance what is in their suitcases, or what they will do alone and together.
Following the performance, we invite you to join us across the road in STUDIO: Future Ritual for drinks, conversation and summer conviviality.
This performance encounter in London follows Field Work, a residential workshop co-facilitated by Marilyn and Anne in the Eden Valley.
Weblink: https://futureritual.co.uk/marilyn-arsem-anne-bean-a-performance-dialogue-(2026)
Yolanda He Yang: itchy grief_formed conditions I
Date and time: Saturday, August 15, 2026, 4 to 6 pm.
Location: GHOSTMACHINE Gallery, 23 Monroe St, New York, NY, 10002, USA
GHOSTMACHINE Gallery is pleased to present itchy grief_formed conditions I, a new work by
interdisciplinary artist Yolanda He Yang in conjunction with the current exhibition ESCAPE-VELOCITY.
Yolanda He Yang will debut itchy grief_formed conditions I, an urban iteration of a new series of
works stemming from her recent experimentation with plasticity of land surfaces and their ability
to sustain shifting assemblages of decay and renewal. This durational performance will coalesce from objects and urban debris found near the gallery site and placed in a dialogue with forces of time and gravity. Through gestures of inflation and deflation, air comes to the fore as a mediating dimension capable of collapsing the conceptual distance between discrete forms and landscape.
In itchy grief_formed conditions I, Yang asks what forms of repair, settlement, and intelligence
remain available to a place already saturated with human infrastructure and material remnants of
ceased activities?
The performance will take place both indoor and outdoor, rain or shine.
Image credit: Kledia Spiro
Kledia Spiro with Vjosa-Narta Perfume
Dates: May 31, 2026 - Ongoing
Location: Tirana, Albania
The Vjosa-Narta protected area is the last wild river delta coastline remaining in the Mediterranean. It is home to flamingos and numerous endangered species, and now under threat from development pressures tied to tourism. Vjosa-Narta Perfume is a conceptual work made in response to that threat: an object intended to hold what could otherwise be lost, in a form that persists beyond any single outcome for the land itself.
The work is presented as part of the Dorëheqje Biennial, and is free and open to the public.
Recent Past Events
FIELD WORK - an intensive residential workshop with Marilyn Arsem and Anne Bean
Dates: July 28, 2026 through August 3, 2026
Location: in the Eden Valley, Cumbria, UK
The Field Work residential workshop explores collaboration in and with landscape. Spending a week immersed in the beautiful and evocative Eden Valley, we will consider the role of site in performance art, exploring multiple approaches for being with place and working with the land as an active collaborator.
Co-led by Marilyn Arsem and Anne Bean, this unique collaborative workshop has emerged from the artists’ shared interest in site-responsive performance work. While they approach performance art from different geographies and trajectories, their distinct practices share a spirit of openness that informs the way they encounter places and histories.
This openness is about listening and making space for the place to speak, about treating it as an active collaborator and approaching it ethically. It is about seeing what emerges from the meeting of body, time, memory, weather and land, rather than imposing a work on (or in spite of) the landscape. In this way the landscape is not decorative, supportive or metaphorical, but ‘emerges as a full character’ (Glissant).
Field Work takes place in the Eden Valley, a beautiful, rural place situated between England’s North Pennines and Cumbrian fells. Aligned with the seasonal festivals of Lughnasadh and Lammas, the Field Work residential workshop marks a time of harvest and transition — an occasion to meet the landscape (and each other) as teacher, interlocutor, and collaborator.
This is a residential workshop, meaning we will live together for the week. We will be based on a four acre private campsite amid biodiverse land. From this base we will walk to and spend time with evocative sites in the area, including ancient monuments, forests, fields, rivers and former industrial sites, now overgrown. Wherever we are, the landscape will guide and shape our work.
The programme will balance collective and solo practice. Our explorations will involve small group sessions, conversational exchange, individual and collaborative tasks, devising performance actions, evening sharings, practices of listening, and periods of silence.
We invite participants to arrive without preconceived ideas about how they will relate to these places, and without firm notions of how they will be in this landscape. Rather, we ask that they bring openness, questions, and a willingness to somehow dislodge fixed notions as we encounter both outer and inner terrains.
Weblink: https://futureritual.co.uk/field-work-a-residential-workshop-with-marilyn-arsem-anne-bean-(2026)
Image Credit: Long Meg and Her Sisters, Neolithic stone circle, Eden Valley, Cumbria, UK, December 4, 2025, photo by Joseph Schofield.
Photo credit: Dirty Time.
Heather Kapplow with Dirty Time in Residence at Urban Soil Institute/SWALE House
Dates: Monday July 20 - Sunday August 2, 2026
Visiting hours Saturdays & Sundays from 11am-5pm or by appointment: email info@ecoartspace.org
Location: Nolan Park 6b, Governors Island, NYC
Dirty Time (Hey There Kapplow & Walker Tufts) will be researching, experimenting and testing prototypes related to projects we are looking for opportunities to develop at a larger scale in 2027-2028. Including, but not limited to:
Wormplay, a participatory experience that rides the fine line between BDSM and vermicomposting; Rookery, an immersive educational installation about how Provincetown MA’s cormorant community and queer carnival celebrations intersect; and State 3 (working title), work around decomposition and the non-binary-ness of life and death.
Weblink: https://urbansoils.org/art-extension-service
Heather Kapplow and Yolanda Yang Included in Attaché: An ASB Group Show
Dates: April 11 to July 11, 2026
Opening Reception: April 18, 2026, 4 to 7 pm
Location: BCA Mills Gallery, 551 Tremont St. Boston, MA 02116, USA
Mobius artists Heather Kapplow and Yolanda Yang both have works included in Attaché: An ASB Group Show
For the first time in several years, the Boston Center for the Arts is highlighting artists from its Artist Studio Building with a group exhibition open to the public.
Experience work created by the artists who reside behind our walls, and meet the individuals who are vital not only to our campus, but to the Boston arts community.
Attaché, curated by Meclina Gomes, is a group exhibition that brings together artists whose contemporary practices are shaped by inherited culture, migration, and lived lineage. Each artist functions as a cultural attaché—carrying memory, tradition, and embodied knowledge from one context into another. Their work reflects how origin informs identity and how culture is activated, translated, and reimagined through material, process, and form. Positioned within Mills Gallery’s commitment to artist-driven inquiry, the exhibition frames creative practice as legacy work: a deliberate laying of bricks that honors the past while shaping what is carried forward.
From curator Meclina Gomes:
“My curatorial approach is informed by my own storytelling-based art practice, which centers cultural memory, personal narrative, and intergenerational continuity. This approach aligns with Mills Gallery’s focus on dialogue, experimentation, and process-based work. Through this lens, Attaché becomes a connective space where individual histories remain distinct yet interwoven, revealing shared practices of care, stewardship, and cultural responsibility. The exhibition invites viewers to consider how contemporary artists hold, translate, and extend legacy within an evolving cultural landscape.”
Exhibiting Studio Residents:
AOA Collective •Beatriz Amelia •Bell Pitkin • Claudio Eshun • Emily Rose • Feda Eid • Frantz Lexy • Georgina Lewis • Heather Kapplow • Homa Sarabi • Ifé Franklin • Isaac Zerkle • Jamal Thorne • Jose Cotto • Lilan Yang • Maria Molteni • Mark Hernandez-Motaghy • Marla McLeod • Miguel Caba • Navid Mood • Ng’endo Mukii • Ngoc-Tran Vu • Nicola Rose • Rani Sarin • Selina Narovlansky • Shima Taj Bakhsh • Imagine • Xray Aims • Yolanda Yang • Yuko Okabe
For more details and to RSVP for reception: https://bostonarts.org/event/attache-an-asb-group-show/