On December 5, 2024, KinDRAG will convene a conversation, collaborative performance, and a community drag show to celebrate the closing of the Lane Hall Gallery exhibition KIN: Us & Our Kinds by ancient historian and artist Rafe Neis (UM Professor of History, IPAH, Judaic, WGS).
The exhibition brings together arts-based research that was executed over the past decade alongside more conventional historical research in articles and book form. The artworks in the exhibition itself activate "classical" themes and iconography, as well as textual and visual sources from the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean more broadly.
This closing event continues the exhibition's multigenre exploration of the ancient past and its ongoing afterlives; animality; gender; and queertrans kinship. Several invited local guests outside of UM participated in the conversation, performance, and drag show (including Neda Ulaby of NPR, London Beck, Lior Rubenfeld, Morgan Meis, and Stefany Golberg), alongside members of the UM community (including from the Classical Studies, History, IPAH, Judaic, and Romance communities).
The event is planned as a lively engagement with the reverberations of antiquity in the present through the form of scholarship, art, and performance.
