The Ringling Presents World Premiere of John Sims Performance 2020: (Di)Visions of America

December 18, 2020 – Sarasota

The John and Mable Ringling is pleased to welcome Sarasota based artist and a 2020-2021 Ringling Artist in Residence John Sims to the stage of the Historic Asolo Theater for the premiere presentation of 2020: (Di)Visions of America. The work marks the culmination of artist John Sims’ 20-year long multimedia project Recoloration Proclamation, which features a series of Confederate flag installations, performances and exhibitions that explore the complexity of identity, cultural appropriation and visual terrorism in the context of Confederate iconography and African American culture. In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. day, Sims will offer a live-streamed presentation on Jan. 16, with recorded broadcast performances available for viewing Jan. 17 and 18^th, 2021. The artist’s fall residency at the museum was dedicated to planning and producing the new work.

Responding to Covid 19, American policing and the pushback on Confederate iconography and systemic white supremacy, artist and writer John Sims has created a multimedia performance that examines these themes in the both context of Black Lives Matter and global citizenship. The performance reflects the year 2020’s historic collage of collective fear, unrest and protest: the conditions for both exposing deep divisions and the making of a new vision that values justice, social respect and the power of transformative compassion. Based on his recent op-eds and the use of an evolving self-portrait, the show will respond to the main events of 2020 with his KoronaKilla video game, Dear Police sound piece, and a Gamble Plantation as a Slave Memorial Animation. To engage the community directly, various community leaders and their personal responses will be incorporated into the presentation.

After the performances, the Historic Asolo Theater will be open to visitors for AfroDixia: The Ringling Museum Session, a flag viewing and listening experience available Jan. 18-25, 2021. This audio-visual-poetic pop-up exhibition will present a giant version of the artist’s signature Afro Confederate flag, in conversation with the audio screening of The AfroDixieRemixes. This 13-year music project confronts the song Dixie–the anthem of the Confederacy–by subversively remixing, remapping and cross-appropriating with a collection of 14 tracks of Dixie in the many genres of Black music: Spiritual, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Funk Calypso, Samba, Soul, rhythm and blues, House, hip-hop, featuring local musicians from Sarasota, Florida and surrounding areas. 

Immediately following these showings, Sims’ video Recoloration Proclamation, 2020  will be on view at The Ringling’s Monda Gallery for Contemporary Art as part of For Real This Time, an exhibit featuring film and video-based work by seven artists from the U.S. and Canada, whose work explores issues of race, history, representation, and social justice on view Jan. 29 – Feb. 18, 2021.

Tickets to the performance are $15 per household, $13.50 for museum members.  Tickets can be purchased online at ringling.org/events/2020-divisions-america-john-sims or at the box office in person or by phone at  941-360-7399. All performances will be accessed online via ticket confirmation email.