Matrilineal Ambivalences is a new performance by Multi-disciplinary artists and performers Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye that continues their series of collaborative performances Rites of Matrilineal Dissent (2015 – ongoing). Kwak and Ye reprise their roles as “Baby Girl” and “Mommy,” enacting their dissent to harmful notions of womanhood and femininity, and emergence from the ruptures of motherhood, gender transition, migration, and the desire and pain that divide them from their lineage and the invalidations of their existence their own families.

The digitally mediated performance takes audiences through a journey of failure and discovery, of new selves and new bodies, and new forms of love and kinship as they use a cast of Ye’s pregnant torso worn by Kwak to further explore the materiality of queer, trans, and femme bodies as they give birth, live, die, decay, and question what the future holds. The performance takes on a participatory turn as Kwak and Ye cross the proscenium and into the space of the audience, activating the transition of passive viewers into active participants in the performance as it weaves through the different spaces of the theater. Watch the 4-minute cut of the 30-minute performance below.

This event was co-organized between Fail-Safe and the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, with financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and the Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts.