Rashaad Newsome: Chimera

Chimera is an immersive exhibition centered on a newly commissioned film, also titled Chimera, which fuses elements from Newsome's prior works Hands Performance and Build or Destroy with a new interquel film that bridges their narratives. This connecting piece explores the origins and journey of the bejeweled figure in flames from Build or Destroy, revealing where they come from and the purpose that led them to Earth. This exhibition reflects a bold shift in Newsome's practice toward sci-fi filmmaking, layering the architecture of film, movement, and world-building to probe themes of identity, resistance, and creation.

Hands Performance takes its name from the well-known vogue fem element that elevates the language of the hands to storytelling. In this film, Newsome collaborated with Black Queer ASL interpreters and movement artists from vogue fem and flex dance cultures to translate his poetry into a movement dataset for Being, the Digital Griot. Set on a spaceship above Earth, Being and their companions perform, gliding between signing and dancing. Their movements convey an expressive, immaterial expressivity fundamental to Black American life. These gestures bring to life Black and Queer kinesics, mapping a physical language that transcends worlds.

In Build or Destroy, a figure adorned in jewels descends from the heavens in flames, voguing through a fictional cityscape to a soundtrack crafted to evoke power and defiance. The figure, a composite of Black femme bodies, symbolizes community as resistance. The dance, sparking fires throughout the city, signals the figure’s transformative power, consuming structures that deny bodily autonomy and heralding a rebirth from within.

The exhibition’s film trilogy is complemented by two new collage works, striking a balance between art pieces and promotional film posters. These collages continue the materiality of the cinematic experience beyond the screen, celebrating the fluid role of art in shaping the visual and symbolic world of Chimera. Aesthetically, the artworks capture both the theatrical dynamism and sci-fi inspiration driving the film’s characters, further embedding the work in the lineage of speculative Black art.

Custom wall vinyl installations will envelop the space—walls, floor, and ceiling—fostering an immersive experience that situates viewers within the cinematic universe. Here, promotional material, film, and architecture become pliable elements in the evolving process of artmaking. This project marks a new direction in Newesome's practice, reshaping the structures of sci-fi filmmaking into a vehicle for resistance and liberation and using the architecture of film and promotional materials to deepen the exploration of the characters’ mythic journeys. Through Chimera, the art of filmmaking becomes an ever-expanding universe, unbound by genre or form.