Rashida Bumbray
Crew
Biography
Rashida Bumbray is a curator and choreographer. Her performance and experimental film work draws from Black vernacular and folk forms, including ring shouts, work songs, hoofing, and the blues—accessed through research, a lineage of Black women dancers, and teachers, and the architectures of improvisation, surrender, and possession.
Known For
Leigh’s video work Untitled (M*A*S*H) (2018) imagines a fictive order of black nurses operating on the front of the Korean War, a conflict that began between the United States and North Korea in 1950 and never officially ceased. Like M*A*S*H—the long-running American TV show (1972–83) it parodies—the work directs attention to the overlooked life in the staging grounds. Showcasing the agonizing choices faced by those who staff the tented encampments of war, it perhaps also serves as a reminder that our neighborhoods remain a warfront too. Using only artist’s tools, Leigh asks: How do we transform ourselves and others?
Untitled (M*A*S*H)
Rashida Bumbray’s short film Untitled (How High the Moon) reimagines her mother’s childhood visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art through the lens of magical realism.