

This performance action is informed by The Gleaners by Jean-Francois Millet, 1857. A female participant navigates a path while supporting a cube on her back upon which a landscape is painted. As she struggles to keep the box on her back captured audio that recounts police and extra judicial terrorism against Black people is broadcast.

Straight Line, Cross and Point is a mediation on the terror perpetrated on Black and Brown people. A dot matrix printer receives tweets from those who have experienced police harassment and/or brutality. As the sound from the printer fills the gallery space Fleming draws and post banners on the windows which ultimately obscure his presence with words that refute the graphic descriptions of the tweets.

Prompted by the mediated media exposing the policing and killing of Black bodies, Sherman Fleming goes about his daily activities while wearing a hangman’s noose around his neck.

Sherman Fleming and Lumpy Teddybear invites passersby to consider the contributions of African-Americans to the sport of horseracing as well as the apocryphal origins of the lawn jockey while posing for a picture seated upon a horse.

The performance muses on the adage “men act, women appear.” Fleming, with the assistance of Bethe Bronson and Haig Paul lies buried in a pit of sugar while of projection of him dances behind him. Fleming lies dormant in the pit as Bronson selects and changes her clothes, but also, selects and copies texts from a stack of books that feature themes on the body and representation.

AxVapor is a durational performance. Fleming spins on duckpin balls until he falls down. He repeats this movement, extending the duration of the spinning and which makes a more dramatic fall. The spinning and falling are equivalent in this action.

Western History As a 3-Story Building (Prelude). Sherman Fleming and Kristine Stiles collaborate in this performance by pressing a board between their bodies as they beat out a rhythm on each other’s buttocks.

Sherman Fleming and Kristine Stiles collaborate in a performance that illustrates the racially twinned expressions of trauma and erotism.

Terry Adkins and Sherman Fleming. ICA. Philadelphia, PA. Adkins and Fleming create a state of becoming.