Artist-in-Residence

Cynthia Hopkins

Cynthia Hopkins, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Must Don’t Whip ‘Um Memorial Quilt (detail, one side), 2015. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

In Memorabilia, Cynthia Hopkins wove detritus collected from her performance pieces into several double-sided, large-scale “quilts” made in collaboration with FWM. These materials ranged from hundreds of pages of handwritten notes—scribbled during the process of devising songs, stories, characters, and costumes—to remnants of her costumes and props. Each piece allowed Hopkins to communicate a story about a specific performance in a fragmented, folkloric form through arranged materials, embroidered lyrics, and hand-drawn diagrams. A new sound piece permeated the installation, to create a cohesive narrative.

As evinced by the title, Hopkins intended for Memorabilia to serve the purpose memorials are designed to serve. Memorials celebrate, and put to rest, what is no longer living, so that those mourning their loss can move on. At the same time, memorials enrich the present with a remembrance of things past so that those who may not be familiar with what has been lost may potentially learn from it, or be curious about it, or shed a tear.

Artist Bio

American, born 1972. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  

Cynthia Hopkins is an internationally acclaimed musical performance artist. Her multi-media performance works incorporate music, text, video, and theatrical design to create imaginative stories, interweaving truth with outlandish fiction. Hopkins received her B.A. from Brown University, RI in 1995. She is best known for “The Accidental Trilogy,” a series of full-length pieces consisting of Accidental Nostalgia (2004); Must Don’t Whip ‘Um (2007); and The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success) (2009). Hopkins was a founding member of the band Gloria Deluxe (1999–2009), which recorded eight full-length albums while active. Hopkins was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 as well as a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2015, which she used in part to assist her residency project at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. Hopkins’ work has been performed at venues including  Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; On the Boards, Seattle, WA; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Philadelphia Performing Arts Festival, PA; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY; and Les Subsistances, Lyon, France; among others.