Emerson Sigman is from Chicago, IL. A 2014 graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema Arts and Sciences, Sigman's practice integrates performance, its documentation, moving and still images, and language. He has been featured in The Stereo Studio, Forget Good, and Columbia College's Imprint publication. Sigman is also the recipient of a mentorship project through Homeroom's Emerging/Established Artists Exchange, a participant in Industry of the Ordinary’s Summer School, and a student in Lucky Pierre’s Free University.

Emerson Sigman will be performing at a private event on Wednesday, March 31. 

Ion Yamazaki, originally from Niigata, Japan is a visual artist currently based in Tokyo, Japan. He focuses on exploring futility of everyday life and social and societal structures that people use for both evading and embracing the futility.  Yamazaki received his BFA in Sculpture at California State University Long Beach before moving to Atlanta to complete his MFA in Sculpture at Georgia State University in 2015. In addition to his frequent participation to various gallery exhibitions in Atlanta, Yamazaki was part of FLUX NIGHT 2013 and SOMA Summer 2014 in Mexico City. Having taught art classes at Georgia State university for a year, he relocated himself to Tokyo in 2016. 

Ion Yamazaki will be performing an 8 hour durational piece at the Faulkner Performing Arts Center at the University of Arkansas on Thursday, March 30. Performance begins at 8am and ends at 4pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here.

Hector Canonge

Hector Canonge is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and cultural entrepreneur based in New York City. His work incorporates the use of new media technologies, cinematic narratives, performance, and socially engaged art to explore and treat issues related to constructions of identity, gender roles, psychogeography, and the politics of migration.  Challenging the white box settings of a gallery or a museum, or intervening directly in public spaces, his performances mediate movement, endurance, and ritualistic processes.  Some of his actions and carefully choreographed performances involve collaborating with other artists and interacting with audiences. His installations, interactive platforms, public interventions, and performance art projects have been exhibited and presented in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia. 

Hector Canonge will be performing at the Faulkner Performing Arts Center at the University of Arkansas on Thursday, March 30. Performance begins at 3pm.

This is a free event. Please register here.

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions surrounding particular subject matter. Much of his current work focuses on the Prison Industrial Complex and the many issues accompanying incarceration in its relationship to slavery. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration. Presentations have taken place in schools, active prisons and also inactive prisons such as Alcatraz. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014 MAP Grantee for performance. In 2015 he was awarded a Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant. In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute and College of Art. 

Paul Rucker will be performing at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on March 30. Performances begin at 7pm. 

The Crystal Bridges performance is free for INVERSE festival registrants only by presenting confirmation ticket. 

Please register to receive free entry.

A 2010 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors, Darryl Lauster is an Intermedia artist, writer and an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has exhibited nationally at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Cameron Museum of Art, Appalachian State University, the Urban Center for Contemporary Art, the John Michael Kohler Foundation and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, as well as internationally in Germany, England and The Netherlands. His wide-ranging work, including sculpture, performance and video, investigates and appropriates American culture, dissecting the confluence of myth and truth---particularly in the way one's world view and understanding of history is often defined by it.  Lauster performs under the guise of his alter-ego Josh Court, the leader of the Northern White Rhino Militia.  The Inverse Performance Art Festival is the artist's first exhibition in Arkansas.

Darryl Lauster will be performing at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on March 30. Performances begin at 7pm. 

The Crystal Bridges performance is free for INVERSE festival registrants only by presenting confirmation ticket. 

Please register to receive free entry.

Jil Guyon is an award winning visual and performing artist based in New York City. In "Desert Widow," she explores the dark recesses of the female psyche through the merger of solo performance with large scale video projection, music, and silence.

Jil Guyon will be performing at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on March 30. Performances begin at 7pm. 

The Crystal Bridges performance is free for INVERSE festival registrants only by presenting confirmation ticket.

Please register to receive free entry.

Fearbook Live           

Fearbook Live is a "choose the contestants' art adventure" gameshow created by Ally Bortolazzo and Elizabeth Folk. Variables are chosen by audience members, contestants must complete a work of art to be displayed in 24 hours, artists go Facebook Live every hour on the hour.

EPISODE 1: PERFORMANCE ART

Thursday, March 30 - Friday, March 31

LIVE on the hour with Ally, Elizabeth, Marc Bobro, and Charles Starr

Follow Fearbook Live (https://www.facebook.com/fearbooklive) for the 24 hours leading up to their noon performance on Friday, March 31, at Foxhole Public House in Bentonville.

This is a free event. Please register here.

Originally trained as a sculptor, Ford has conducted explorations in the fields of sculpture and printmaking and, more recently, drawing and performance art. His performances currently look to everyday life for paradigms that can be isolated and examined in durational events which retrace certain actions and activities observed in life. Ford calls these borrowed activities 'found actions'. During the performance Ford must take his suitcase everywhere with him in a determined effort to enjoy his holiday (no holiday).

Patrick Ford will be live streaming his performance from Hong Kong at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville on Friday, March 31. Performances begin at 4pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Laurence Myers Reese (né Laura) is an artist, writer, curator, and arts administrator in Norman, Oklahoma. Reese has exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Fe, NM), la Esquina Gallery (Kansas City, MO) and Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ), and was recently featured on Hyperallergic. He is Executive Director of the nonprofit art space Individual Artists of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. He recently received a Spotlight grant from the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition for his project “RE: Season 10 Audition (FtM Plz Consider),” a film documenting the creation of an audition tape for RuPaul’s Drag Race. This premiers in May 2017 at East Central University (Ada, OK) for Momentum Ada, a festival of film and new media, with keynote speaker John Waters.

Laurence Myers Reese will be performing at 21c Bentonville on Friday, March 31. Performance begins at 6pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Jessica Borusky is an artist, educator and curator in Kansas City, MO. Their performance practice(s) highlight traumatic-humor, failure, and queer-feminist perspectives within the tenuous conceit of American Exceptionalism. Borusky is also the founder and co-director of Flesh Crisis: a nomadic platform for showcasing performance work. Visit www.jessicaborusky.com for more information.

Jessica Borusky will be performing at 21c Bentonville on Friday, March 31. Performance begins at 630pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here.

On The Row is a staged reading of the stories of 10 men currently on Death Row in Arkansas.  The work was collected over the summer and fall of 2016 through a creative writing class led by Kathy McGregor whose team met in-person with death row prisoners multiple times at Varner State Prison.  The writings of these men were then edited and have been presented as a staged reading by actors of our NWA community.  The Prison Stories Project continues to respectfully carry the stories of these men on Death Row out of the silence of their solitary confinement. Since 2001 The Prison Story Project has entered correctional centers to give men and women the tools to tell their stories.  The guiding principle is that no voice should be silenced and the hope was that a staged reading of their own writings would help bridge the gap between the incarcerated and the communities to which they hope to return. This effort evolved to include those who had been silenced most of all – the men on death row.  The staged reading of their own words is not meant to deny or ignore wrong, but to affirm each man’s humanity. www.nwaprisonstories.com

NWA Prison Story Project will will be performing at 21c Bentonville on Friday, March 31. Performance begins at 730pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Flounder Lee is an artist/curator/educator living in the UAE where he is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at American University in Dubai. He received his BFA from the University of Florida and his MFA from California State University Long Beach, both in studio art and photography. He uses various media such as photo, video, performance, sound, and installation to create work that engages viewers in important topics. For Inverse, he is performing a sciency piece investigating sand from the Arabian desert under a microscope. 

Flounder Lee will be live streaming his performance from Dubai at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville on Friday, March 31. Performance begins at 9pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here.

I am grateful to Marcel Duchamp for beginning swimming lessons, for opening my creative vision to a myriad of possibilities with regards to materials and humor. I am also grateful to John Cage for giving me the opportunity to hear the silence between the notes and to Joseph Beuys for his willingness to show us his wounds.

Photo by Kristoffer Johnson.

John Chiaromonte will perform a 6 hour durational piece beginning at 10am on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Angeli lives and works in New York. Her work creates conditions for immaterial and material embodied transformations, towards new ways of elaborating life and the possibilities of being otherwise. Some people call her a performance artist. connected, i am a storm is a site-responsive work that allows place to shape memory. Last iteration presented at Pioneer Works in '16, film in collaboration with Sarah Sitzler.

Photo by Sarah Sitzler.

Angeli will perform on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Tom Maio graduated from Montserrat College of Art in 2013 and now lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. Maio is interested in the relationship between the queer individual and the gothic monster, such as Dracula. These two identities share similar characteristics that evoke fears about sex and death. Maio will be re-performing a new version of his piece untitled (BITE). This piece explores the transformation from human to vampire and the act of coming out as queer, as well as themes of failure and the body.

Tom Maio will perform on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Esther Marveta Neff is an organizer, theorist, and performance-maker. She is the founder of Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL), a lab site in Brooklyn, NY and flexible collaborative making operas-of-operatios. Neff's current work practices collective ideation and investigates matters of attention, motivation, and intention. Her performance art work frequently involves assemblage, hand-made books, and durational inhabitation of embodied research tactics.  www.panoplylab.org, http://estherneff.tumblr.com/

Esther Neff will perform on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here.

Through the use of an interdisciplinary practice, Justin Zachary investigates the relationship between his mother and father as a means of commutation through video and performance. Addressing the issues of masculinity through the memory of his childhood and current issues within his family and social life. His work has been shown in Fathers, Brothers, Sons and TRACES in Baltimore, Maryland and The Big Show in Houston, Texas and Here Today, Gone Tomorrow V in Huntsville, TX along with numerous other exhibitions.

Justin Zachary will perform on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here.

Erin and Jared are a Shanghai-based live art action duo. Using time, space, and their bodies as material they explore the relational aspects of duality, tension, and intimacy in their work. The experiential nature of their practice can be presented publicly as a social experiment or live in a performative context.

Erin and Jared will be live streaming their performance from Shanghai on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here. 

Kaia Gilje and Lorene Bouboushian’s collaborative performances emerged from the desire to deconstruct a performance situation, throwing the room, the performance setting, and the social milieu into relief. Their years of research have formed an improvisational score-based performance relationship that blends vocalizing, moving, and audience/room interaction. Know What Smokes attempts to activate sensation through touch that ranges from tender, to sensual, surprising, painful, mundane, and absurd. Using a system of physical communication and exploration in which sight is removed, they engage with each other through submission, cooperation, and confrontation. The work premiered at Month of Performance Art-Berlin, then toured to Queer Zagreb and Abrons Art Center (NY).

Photo by Laura Bartczak.

Lorene and Kaia will perform on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here.

Amber Eggleton received her Bachelor of Fine Art in Studio Art from Sam Houston State University and is currently attending the University of Arkansas pursuing a Post-baccalaureate in Sculpture. Through sculpture and performance, she discusses the missteps we can make during the attempt to share information. Romanticizing memories of her own and the experiences of others, Eggleton seeks to build and become apart of relationships out of moments that do not belong to her. Her work has been shown at Nude, Backspace, Fayetteville, AR, The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow V, Huntsville, TX.

Amber Eggleton will perform on Saturday, April 1 at the University of Arkansas Art & Design District . 

This is a free event. Please register here.

Sharon Mansur is an experimental contemporary dance/visual artist based in Minnesota, and her projects have been presented throughout the U.S. and abroad. Sharon loves dancing and creating experiences where active viewing and imaginations are welcome, working and playing with others, experimenting, and finding ways to support and build the creative ecology within a community. Identity, mutability, ambiguity, and spontaneity are essential themes that thread through her projects. Originally from New England she currently resides in Minnesota, and is a creative opportunist, happy to share and make art happen anywhere and everywhere!  Dreaming Under a Cedar Tree is a newly evolving performance/installation/food sharing/conversation, reflecting Sharon’s Lebanese-American heritage, and the curiously complex and ambiguous state of being considered ‘off-white.’ www.mansurdance.com

Photo by Zachary Z. Handler.

Sharon Mansur will perform on Saturday, April 1 at Feast Gallery at 7pm. 

This is a free event. Please register here.