Saltwater Road Artist Residency + Performance Institute

“I make art that is wholly about liberation. My liberation, the liberation of oppressed peoples, the liberation of spirit. Liberation is a precarious, dangerous, and awesomely terrifying pursuit, yet I am dedicated to this journey, as so many folks have been before me." Ebony Noelle Golden unflinchingly pursues justice as an artist, scholar, and culture strategist. Hailing from Houston, TX, and currently living and working in Harlem, NY. She is the founder and CEO at Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC. Since 2009, her collaborative has successfully supported organizational transformation and movement building for education, social justice, and cultural wellness campaigns and initiatives with some of the most forward-leaning institutions in the nation. Her creative, coaching and consulting work rely on transparent and equitable partnerships with community members, institutions, and artists actively working for justice and freedom today. Golden’s creative practice is the foundation of her unique approach to devising justice and organizational wellness strategies. She works as a community-based artist and attributes her ability to serve the needs of BDAC’s clients to a rigorous performance practice. As a poet, choreographer, and ritual performance artist, Ebony devises and directs site-specific ceremonies, live art installations, and environmental experiments that activate the throughline of Black liberation. In 2022, Ebony was awarded a fellowship from Princeton University's Entrepreneurship Council and Lewis Center for the Arts. In 2020, she launched Jupiter Performance Studio, which is a hub for the development, exploration, and production of diasporic Black performance traditions. Her work embodies the power of art and collaboration as drivers of a movement for liberation. Please follow https://www.bettysdaughterarts.com/about-ebony for more of her powerful work. We are honored to walk with you Sister Ebony Noelle Golden!

Brother Viktor is a wielder of magical time space now memory craft. Viktor le. Givens is a found object installation performance artist whose practice centers around the gathering and arrangement of ancestral objects to activate spaces for site specific public rituals. By connecting the material culture of his ancestors with pre and post modern spiritual theologies, le. Givens hopes to extend and reimagine the folk customs of his family . His material archive is comprised of the forgotten and discarded household items found during excavations of East Texas, Louisiana, Havana Cuba and Mexico City. . Through the accumulation of these rich cultural artifacts , le. Givens. seeks to create spaces that inspire the activation of cultural and spiritual memory. Please follow Viktor L. Ewing | Givens SouthernAndroid.com | www.participatorymusiccoalition.org SouthernAndroid00@gmail.com Curatorial, Research and Public Arts Brother Viktor L. Ewing Givens, we are honored to walk with you!!!

Azusa SHESHE Dance is a TV/Film/Theater actress and gospel/blues singer from Chattanooga, TN. Belting her rendition of classic R&B, she performs weekly with MTA MUSIC UNDER NEW YORK (MUNY) at five elite subway stations where she’s been crowned DIVA UNDERGROUND for WOMEN’s HISTORY MONTH CELEBRATIONS (2019-2022). SHESHE serves as a panel judge at annual MUNY auditions,  was featured in THE NEW YORK TIMES and in the 2023 MUNY marketing campaign, as one of the top subway entertainers, resulting in a live performance recently on ABC GOOD MORNING AMERICA.   She sings lead vocals with two local NYC blues/jazz bands, as well as solo bookings. Her solo show (written, produced & features SHESHE) HOUN’ DAWG: LIFE & TIMES OF BIG MAMA THORNTON debuted in the NYC UNITED SOLO FESTIVAL 2018, winning the BEST CONCERT AWARD and was featured as the season opener for UNIVERSITY CHAPEL HILL NORTH CAROLINA STONE CENTER FOR BLACK HISTORY & CULTURE in 2019.  SHESHE has graced the APOLLO THEATER, HARLEM SUMMER & the HARLEM TREE LIGHTING stages. Her accolades include: Delta (DOUBLE EDGE THEATRE - IN THE NAME OF), Big Queen (NATIONAL BLACK THEATRE - 125TH & FREEDOM), Dionne (COLUMBIA - HAIR the Rock Musical),  & Evillene (HARLEM BLACKARTS - THE WIZ). She believes the most highly favorable ancestors have truly guided her spiritually to be the best she can be and is spellbound by the love and acceptance of her true southern being & talent.  Please Follow www.sheshedance.com Sister SheShe, we are honored to walk with you!

Marsae Lynette is an interdisciplinary artist, activist, educator, and scholar currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Marsae has earned an M.F.A. in dance at the University of Michigan in 2023 and a B.F.A. in dance at Marygrove College. Her graduate portfolio includes certificates in Arts, Entrepreneurship & Leadership, World Performance Studies, and a fellowship to study Afro diasporic dance in Cuba. Choreographing and teaching at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the University of Michigan has allowed her to develop a pedagogical mission of cultural and personal expression through theatrical and screened renderings of ritual. Marsae’s interdisciplinary choreographic series "Reconnecting Currents” merges scholarly research, environmental activism, and artistic practice focusing on themes of cultural identity and ecological consciousness. Most recently she is the recipient of the Global Water Dances Site Leader award (2023). For more information please visit her website https://www.marsae-eleda.com

Kristina Beaty, known as “The Glam Tech” for elevating hair styling in the city of Detroit for over 25 years. She has taken her hair styling expertise and leveraged it into a new genre of art using sculpted hair fibers as a medium on canvas and 3-D sculpture. The Glam Tech's mission is for hair sculpting to be respected as a fine art. Her work is inspired by the currency of water. She incorporates some element of her signature glam wave pattern in each piece to reflect movement and rebellion to stagnate energy while carrying vintage codes in our life force prompting her tag line… #makewaves. She has demonstrated "The Art of Hair Sculpting" live at the prestigious Detroit Institute of Arts, and was featured at the Charles H. Wright Museum, The Scarab Club, Playground Detroit, Art Mile, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit & Season 2 of BMF! The Glam Tech's work has also been published in the Vogue, Metro Times, Galore Magazine, Michigan Chronicle, Hour Detroit Magazine, WWD, Buzz Feed and various other media outlets. She is now residing in Los Angeles as a catalyst to a global platform to broaden exposure for her innovative art form and her bespoke hairspray @glamsculpt.

Jennifer Ligaya is an AfroPinay sound, movement, and performance practitioner, and healer born and raised in Chicago with an interdisciplinary background in visual art, vocal performance, dance, and theater. Mother to a Scorpio son and full time PhD student of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, her original work includes solo and collaborative performance compositions and sound installations. A sponsored artist, grant recipient, and commissioned multimedia artist, her compositions amplify critical conversations around identity, liberatory practices,  ancestral indigenous knowledge systems, and moments of communal healing, through the weaving of traditional and contemporary sound, performance, and personal ancestral folk arts practices. The newest core member of Honey Pot Performance, her current creative practice explores Afro-Asian feminist subjectivities and speculative arts, indigenous healing and survival practices, and the genealogies of justice.