'Boy mother / faceless bloom' West Coast Premiere Envelopes Seattle Audiences in a Delirious Exploration of Our Deepest, Lightest Core

Juni One Set's "Boy mother / faceless bloom" graced the intimate, no-frills stage of Queen Anne's On the Boards for three nights, Dec. 12–14, including one COVID-19 safer performance (featuring a masked-required section for a third of the theater). Art ensemble Juni One Set consists of visual artist Senga Nengudi, interdisciplinary artist yuniya edi kwon, and two leaders of Degenerate Art Ensemble, Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl, who describes "Boy mother / faceless bloom" as "four artists from four very different backgrounds using four different mediums to bring you a shared dream, a shared mythology that's come to life on stage."

The 90-minute multidisciplinary performance is a collaboration more than five years in the making; since the collective developed its joint work as part of a four-year residency at Colorado College, "Boy mother / faceless bloom" has enjoyed a premiere at the college and was subsequently presented at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and New York Live Arts. 

For its West Coast premiere in Seattle, "Boy mother / faceless bloom" faced enthusiastic and curious audiences who were eager to engage, and the performance likewise invited audience participation — as people entered the theater, ushers handed out small packets of seeds to be used as instruments during the finale. The piece included a harmonious moment of song that joined the artists onstage with three sections of the audience. 

"Boy mother / faceless bloom" opens with the words "dissolve the nation into the land / no beginning and no end," immediately rejecting physical and metaphysical borders, challenging the construct of time as linear. Though the thread that runs through "Boy mother / faceless bloom" is personal mythology and transcendence, the performance is highly interpretive and thought-provoking, which can be expected of a piece of art from four artists who create from different mediums. 

Thus, the transitions between segments of the piece are ostensibly nebulous, not necessarily coherent to the audience. But, importantly, prominent themes and Juni One Set's common artistic interests shine throughout: ensemble poetry effectively reveres nature and ancestral lines, and the screens' projections of various landscapes integrated into each section demonstrate our indelible connection to nature. Nishimura's butoh dance and kwon's violin espouse playfulness, improvisation, and the boundless possibility of queerness. While Nengudi's use of natural elements (sand, dirt, rocks) and unconventional materials, like found or oft-discarded objects (pantyhose, wrapping paper, mail packaging), provides a sobering, grounding effect for the performance, Kohl's audience engagement through song encourages communal participation.

"Boy mother / faceless bloom" speaks to the experiences of People of Color displaced from their physical or spiritual homelands, or those who may find themselves estranged from blood relatives during this dark season, or those who are grappling with how to forge an identity and life seemingly dissimilar but not remotely distinct from their ancestors'.

This eternal and ephemeral identity that is molded into who we create ourselves as now, into infinite futures … indeed, Nengudi intends for the mythologies presented in the ensemble performance to "transform you and allow you to go beyond yourself."

It is the ultimate work of a dream, hazy and not particularly certain, but nonetheless a miraculous journey we should celebrate for our sheer determination to embark on it. 

Find out more about Juni One Set's artistic process and goals on the On the Boards YouTube channel.