about

I am a Georgia artist whose work spans body-based installations, sculpture, and land-based projects. With a background in dance, my work is informed by an ongoing exploration of choreography mapping, and ecofeminism, in how they suggest that the knowledge we require to adapt is being carried, recovered, and newly imagined. Choreography not as a discreet movement but as an expansive concept. i came to explore the sun, of something more permanent, the moves are maps (2021) is one part of a larger research piece, and my first work for film. Offering Westside Atlanta’s Proctor Creek as action, and water as movement, I actively challenge us to slowly navigate through the entire space, and together, think about what water can teach the South about gender, intimacy, equity, prayer, and collective power. i came to explore the sun activated Bonnefont Marsh Nature Reserve, a 38-acre site in Bordeaux, France (2021), a commission of Heritage and Culture Foundation, with support of an Oakspace Residency. I create community mapping alternatives for work outside the Deep South. In 2015, I collaborated with Brooklyn Queens Land Trust in New York, as part of and all directions I come to you, a Creative Time project, which provided services including constructing and tending to community green spaces. In tandem, the work activated 80 acres of Central Park’s North Woods with movement and relational systems. The large-scale SEARCH ENGINE (2015-ongoing) invests in the possibilities of what sowing in semi-enclosed structures and gallery spaces of Atlanta Contemporary could provide in an unstable future. Taking its title from the name of real-time information systems that carry out searches, I sow and grow grass over time, referencing architecture including Etowah Mounds and a land clearing in Atlanta. SEARCH ENGINE is also part of a communal work as the first choreographer as artist-in-residence at the High Museum of Art (2019). Operating in a similar vein, lost loose and loved ( 2020-ongoing) reimagines a vacant 2.5 acre lot into a thriving biophilic haven, creating the illusion of being on a prairie in the middle of the city. The micro prairie utilizes native Southern flowers, mostly pollinators, as an invitation for community sowing, and live art interventions by local moving artists, college students and artists.

I am a United States Artist Fellow nominee (2022, 2018). I was named one of The 100 Most Influential Georgian’s in 2022 by Georgia Trend. From 2000-2005, I performed with renowned Hubbard St. Dance Chicago, touring nationally and internationally, and originating roles in the troupes intensely physical repertoire. I won Chicago's Music and Dance Alliance Ruth Page Award and was named Chicagoan of the Year for my full-length debut, Moody Hollow (2005). 
 
I am a graduate of Point Park University (BFA). I graduated Summa Cum Laude in the inaugural cohort of the Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA (2021), led by artist and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. I was Georgia Tech’s 2015 Resident Artist. I was awarded Emory College Center for Creativity and Arts inaugural Community Impact Artist Award 2010.

In 2009, I founded glo, a non profit intersectionality-centered platform advancing free cultural services to change systems. glo received an NEA Art Works (2022-23) and Rauschenberg Foundation Grant (2016-13) for The Traveling Show, a long-term project traveling extensively to engage rural South communities, and research secular and aspects of life there.

I am the High Museum of Art's first choreographer as artist-in-residence (2019). I am the recipient of the Lorenzo Il Magnifico prize at the Florence Biennale (2019). I am the recipient of the 2018 Hudgens Prize, and a MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow. She is an Artadia award recipient, and in 2012, garnered an Academy of Arts & Sciences Rome Prize nomination. I am a Hambidge Center for Arts & Sciences Fellow, and a Bogliasco Fellow.

I collaborated with the Goat Farm Arts Center to create Tanz Farm: a contemporary anthology (2012-onward) to expand boundaries and support for new live art ideas, structures, and languages in the Deep South. To date, 27 artists from 11 countries have been showcased, including Eiko Otake, Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor, Sidra Bell, Erik Thurmand, Fabien Prioville, Malcolm Low /Formal Structure, Ballet Hispanico, Amanda Miller/Core, Staibdance, and Shamel Pitts.

I was a dancer at Ballet BC where I created their first choreography, a 7- minute solo for Boy Wonder. Prior to expanding my choreography practice, I created stage works for American Repertory Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, River North Dance Chicago and Hubbard St. In 2006, I was introduced to Atlanta during a 3-year Choreographic Residency with Atlanta Ballet.  The city's artists, musicians and writers helped open my ideas of what dance is, where it occurs, and the meaningfulness of collaboration.  Having worked professionally for many years now, I was inspired to feel and look at dance through other lens, and rally art teams together to offer other ways of experiencing life. I garnered a Prix Benois de la Danse nomination in choreography for big, starring Atwon "Big Boi" Patton. Works for the stage also include Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, American Ballet Theatre, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Ballet Augsburg, and Ballet British Columbia. I was Visiting artist at Trinity Laban London (2010).

I have collaborated intensely with artists across disciplines, including conductor Robert Spano, poet laureate Pearl Cleage, visual artist Daniel Arsham, filmmakers Micah Stansell and Adam Larsen, Sonic Generator Music Ensemble, mural artists Living Walls, visual artist Gyun Hur, Atlanta Opera, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and chorus, spoken word artist Big Rube, star Janelle Monae', Sleepy Browne and the Dungeon Family, and Goodie Mob.

I was raised in the margins in the Historically Black neighborhood of Gainesville, Florida. My known oral history indicates that I am a 5th generation Southerner born of railroad linesmen, and the Barefoots of the Carolina Lumbee Tribe who helped rais my momma and her sisters. In 2012, my older brother, artist Luke Stallings, died of complications to HIV/AIDS; to date I consider his life as my most important education.

I make all of my work at the Goat Farm Arts Center, Westside Atlanta, the native land of the American Indians of the Cherokee and the Lower Muskogee Creek Tribe, to which I am grateful.