Closing Celebration

What’s significant in terms of the meaning of the Azusa Street Revival is not just speaking in tongues. It’s that this revival was a revolution led by a Black man, and the presence of the Spirit came in the equality of race and gender.

―Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III, from Bridge Projects’ Azusa Street Revival Symposium, April 10, 2021.

The Bridge Projects team expresses deep gratitude for the chorus of voices and artists that contributed to Otherwise/Revival, and for the community that embraced the exhibition.

To commemorate the conclusion of Otherwise/Revival, Bridge Projects invites you to a closing celebration on July 31 from 4 pm – 6pm PDT. The event will include live performances by artists Angela Bryant and VinZula Kara. Refreshments and snacks will be served. Street parking only.

The health and safety of our community is of utmost importance. Masks are required for visitors at all times, and the gallery will provide hand sanitizer as well as ample space for social distancing. Please do not come to the gallery if you have a fever and are not feeling well.

Sista So-n-So
A live performance by Angela Bryant
4 pm - 6 pm PDT (ongoing)

Angela Bryant is an artist, curator, and writer living in Los Angeles. In Bryant’s youth, visiting a Black church felt like visiting another world when compared to the predominantly white, private, conservative Christian school she attended. What she remembers most from those visits was “a sense of warmth, not necessarily a belonging but a welcoming.” Church sisters or lady ushers would greet congregants with perfume-laced hugs and decorated fans. As a child, Bryant collected these church fans, stashing them in between books on her shelf; upon discovering them later, they served as a visual reminder of a warm embrace. That welcoming spirit is what Bryant conjures in her performance piece Sista So-n-So. She recreates the experience of entering a Black church by playing the crucial role of the perpetually smiling church greeter, giving hugs and passing out fans. Sista So-n-So transports an aspect of the Black church experience into the secular space of an art gallery where, in the midst of a global pandemic, intimacy and fellowship with strangers feels otherworldly. A hug feels like a forbidden act, an outdated custom of a bygone era.

Hugs will be offered to those who want them as an act of welcome and a symbol of reconnection after an era of long isolation.

Scribble Cross
Featuring TrainWreck'r VinZula Kara and the Scribble Cross Ensemble
starting at 4:15 pm PDT

Please join artist VinZula Kara and the Scribble Cross Ensemble for a sound performance that invites the audience on a journey of experimental found sound, cacophonous rhythm, and “otherwise possibilities.”

“Cymbolism,” a composite term of symbolism and cymbal coined by Kara, describes an idea or sound that is delivered to reshape the ear and the mind. Scribble Cross is Kara’s newest cymbolic offering that responds to the year of uncertainty and isolation that accompanied the COVID pandemic.

A virtuoso on the piano, Kara bends the rules of the instrument, yielding performances that are daughters of Dada and friends of Fluxus. In a unifying spirit akin to what was alive in the Azusa Street Revival, his practice brings together individuals from disparate backgrounds. For his collaboration with artist Daniel Martinez, Consequences of a Gesture in 1993, he led 800 participants in an absurdist parade from Chicago’s Harrison Park, a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, to Garfield Park, a predominantly Black neighborhood. The processional participatory performance crossed racial and social divides to cultivate an environment of collective joy and discovery.