Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born with Amanda Reid

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.