Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born with Amanda Reid

Five people stand under a single bright light in an otherwise dark setting, setting their faces and upper bodies into chiaroscuro. A person at center faces toward the viewer but looks up, while the others gather at the sides and back of that person and touch them. A couple of the figures show shifting or perhaps pained facial expressions.

From left: Samita Sinha, mayfield brooks, Okwui Okpokwasili, McKenzie Frye, Stacy Lynn Smith. Photograph by Lauren Miller 

The Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Schwarzman Center present a conversation with Sweat Variant, a collaboration between the Nigerian-American artist, performer, choreographer, and writer Okwui Okpokwasili, B.A. 1996, and the American director, composer, and designer Peter Born, B.A. 1995. During their undergraduate studies at Yale, Okpokwasili and Born met and began making performances together. In their singular performance practice, the entanglement of text, the sonic, movement, design, duration, and place becomes a somatic and psychic architecture. In anticipation of their residency and public presentation of new work in process at Yale Schwarzman Center in 2026, the artists discuss their trajectories, their collaborative practice, the site of the museum as a performance space, and the work and future of Sweat Variant. Moderated by Amanda Reid, Assistant Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Yale University. Generously cosponsored by Yale Schwarzman Center and the Gallery’s Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund.