TRANSFORM FEST: Okwui Okpokwasili – Poor People's TV Room

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Okwui Okpokwasili: Poor People’s TV Room at TRANSFORM Fest, YBCA May 9 & 10, 2018. See more at

An interdisciplinary, intensely visual, and textured lens to look at issues of gender, culture, and identity to create a visceral experience where the past is alive and unleashed in the present.

Bessie Award–winning artist Okwui Okpokwasili integrates movement, song, text, and visual imagery in Poor People’s TV Room, giving voice to the oppressed while shedding light on women’s enduring power. Inspired by Nigerian political history, the performance integrates the buried narratives of women in the country and resonates with present actions and political resistance throughout the world. The work was inspired by two historic incidents in Nigeria: the Women’s War of 1929, a resistance movement against British colonial powers; and the Boko Haram kidnappings of more than three hundred girls, which launched the Bring Back Our Girls movement. Women were central to these campaigns, and have played essential and powerful roles in Nigeria’s independence. Poor People’s TV Room envelops the viewer in a multidimensional world to look at issues of gender, culture, identity, and women’s strength, where the past is alive and unleashed in the present.