ZION attempts to draw parallels in the experience of displacement within the context of South Africa’s

history of racial segregation and forced removals

within the global climate of mass migration. The work

is focused on visualizing the universal anxiety caused

by the resurgence of racist and xenophobic rhetoric

in parts of Europe and the United States.

In a time of extreme poverty, political conflict,

violence and human rights abuses, people all over the

world are being forced to seek new lives elsewhere. In

this atmosphere of forced migration, which has seen

people uprooted from the countries of their birth and

forced to move to other parts of the world by land

and sea, established notions of home, nationhood,

citizenship, and personal identity have become

unsettled. The work deals with the consequences of

political policies in South Africa such as the Group

Areas Act, which was created by the apartheid

government of South Africa, and assigned racial

groups to different residential and business sections

in urban areas. An effect of the law was to prevent

nonwhites from living in the most developed areas.

The law led to the forced removal of nonwhites from

homes located in areas designated for whites

In the American context, a similar parallel exists

in the form of the dispossession and removal of a

predominantly African-American settlement in New

York City known as the Seneca village, which was

demolished to develop Central Park in the affluent

borough of Manhattan. Established in 1825 by the

1830s Seneca Village was one of the City’s bestknown African American communities. By the 1850s

Seneca Village — which had three churches, a school,

and its own burial grounds — was an integrated

community of almost 60 households. Most of the

dwellings were inhabited by free black families, more

than half of whom owned their own property, though

Work

Irish and German immigrants moved in later to make

it one of the most stable integrated communities of the

early 19th century.

The performance takes the form of a procession that

will travel in three parts stopping at several historically

significant landmarks along the route that make

connections between the removal of the community

at Seneca Village and the establishment of black

communities in Harlem.

With this in mind, the first chapter commences from

Mother AME Zion Church in Harlem - the first AfricanAmerican congregation in New York City. The route

will run along Adam-Clayton Powell Jr Avenue, Martin

Luther King Boulevard, passing the Hotel Theresa

Building and ending in front of a brownstone house

on W126th Street.

The second chapter commences on the steps of the

Metropolitan Museum and proceeds to Summit Rock

in Central Park, which is located just north of the site

once occupied by the 19th century community of

Seneca Village.

The third and final phase of the performance will

take place in Time Square, proceeding along 42nd

Street to the Broadway Plaza between 42nd and 43rd

Streets for a choreographed performance, before

exiting along 43rd Street. The combination of the

procession and site-specific performance represents a

balance between journey and destination, transience

and settlement, wandering and being home.