Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Gund Commons,11400 Euclid Avenue
Woori Sori (Our Voice) is a Chicago-based, all-women’s Korean percussion group that uses four of the traditional Korean percussion instruments involved in the folk music tradition of pungmul to create space for people to share a powerful connection through dance, singing, and drumming. This performance is in response to group member and artist Aram Han Sifuentes’s solo exhibition at moCa, Who Was This Built to Protect? The exhibition centers around a set of six large-scale red silk curtains with white text that spans the museum’s Gund Commons. The curtains are modeled after Red Cards created by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center with language that outlines the rights and protections held by all people under the U.S. Constitution, regardless of immigration status. Situated in front of these curtains, Woori Sori’s performance inspires conversations about the intellectual, physical, and emotional labor it takes to become a U.S. citizen, as well as the ways in which immigrant communities preserve their cultural identities and traditions even after renouncing citizenship to their home countries. Following the performance, Woori Sori will discuss their work and how it connects to creative histories of protest.
Registration is requested. Register .
This event is co-sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, CWRU.
About Woori Sori:
Woori Sori (meaning Our Voice) is all-women's percussion group that creates a space for people to share the powerful connection through dance, singing, and playing drums. The group normally plays four of the traditional Korean percussion instruments involved in pungmul.
Each of the four instruments represents different aspects of the universe and nature: the kkwaenggwari (smaller gong) – stars and thunder; jing (gong) – sun and wind; buk (barrel drum) – moon and cloud; and janggu (hourglass drum) – rain, and the people who walk upon the land to tie the spirits and body.
Historically, pungmul was played for harvesting rituals, collective farming labor, community celebrations, and gathering people for action to resist colonial power.
Pungmul is not only designed for performance but creates a space to celebrate the lives of all individuals and communities and lift up collective power. Today, it continues to be played by people all over the world to celebrate Korean culture and resist oppression.
Woori Sori is drumming to bring people together not only for performance but also a collective ritual that bridges the powerful connections to celebrate community and gather power to make the transformation.
While such space was dominated by men culturally and historically, Woori Sori came together in 1995 led by a group of leaders at KAN-WIN whose mission is to fight against gender-based violence, and now opened to a larger community that shares values. Multi-generational members of Woori Sori bring various backgrounds as mothers, sisters, community workers, and churchgoers, but the common thread tying us together is our commitment to work together to achieve gender, racial, and social justice.