VIGIL: Prayers of Healing for the Living and the Dead
Cilla Vee

Over the month of July, interdisciplinary artist Cilla Vee will conduct a thirty-day series of performative prayer meditations in response to the recent global traumas of pandemic and violence.
VIGIL: Prayers of Healing for the Living and the Dead will take form in installation, dance and movement, sound and music, writing, drawing, painting, and sometimes in quiet stillness and contemplation.
Each prayer will be based on an investigation into modes of healing related to aspects of the COVID-19 coronavirus and of the Black Lives Matter protests. Particular attention will be paid to lungs, breathing, and cleansing. Healing of mind and body for the living and peaceful passing for the souls of the dead.

The daily schedule will comprise research and preparation during the mornings, then creation/performance action later in the afternoons and evenings. (Subject to change)

Members of the public are invited to view at any time through the gallery window. (Cilla Vee remains in social isolation inside the space.)

Items to be included in a prayer meditation or ritual are most welcomed and can be brought to the gallery and placed outside or mailed to the gallery. Music and text can also be sent via the internet.
Please email cillaveelifearts@gmail.com for more information.

VIGIL: Prayers of Healing for the Living and the Dead is a project affiliated with Re-Cultivating Compassion.

For more information on the project, you can visit their website at https://www.re-cultivatingcompassion.com/ or follow them on Instagram.

About the Artist

Cilla Vee is Claire Elizabeth Barratt, an international inter-disciplinary artist with a background in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. She is the director of Cilla Vee Life Arts and the creator of the Living Art performance pedagogy – developed through the Transart Institute for Creative Research MFA program and accredited by Plymouth University, UK.
Her training includes The Royal Academy of Dance, the Laban Centre and the London Studio Center in the UK as well as serving an apprenticeship with the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation in NYC.
She was a co-Founding Director of Circle Modern Dance and Choreographer for Knoxville Opera Company in Tennessee before moving to New York to establish Cilla Vee Life Arts in 2002.
She has presented work through Chashama, Arts For Art, Art Basel Miami, and tours nationally and internationally to teach Living Art and to create cross-disciplinary collaborations with artists of all genres.
She is now based in Asheville NC, where she has presented work with the Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center, Asheville Art Museum, and Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre.

For more information on Claire visit their website at http://www.cillavee.com/cillavee.html  or follow them on Instagram.

About Enliven NYC

Four New York City Avante-Garde performance artists will each receive a stipend to present daily live interactive performances at four locations throughout Manhattan that will spark your imagination. “Chashama is returning to its roots. Live window installations as we had in the good old days,” says Anita Durst, founder of Chashama.

This grant was made possible by The New York State Council on the Arts.