Li Sumpter

LI SUMPTER
Li Sumpter will work in collaboration with Theatre in the X to create "Blade Runner: Illadelph 2025", a multimedia immersive theater production that reimagines the future world of the sci-fi classic film Blade Runner through an afrofuturistic, BIPOC perspective. This residency will include community based workshops, digital collage, animation, a podcast mini-series, and real-time audience engagement via interactive media, such as QR codes and gaming installations. This work seeks to use an afrofuturist lens to reframe and amplify existential themes and future visions of Theatre in the X's audiences to worldbuild and co-create bright, Blacker futures for the BIPOC communities in Philadelphia.

THEATRE IN THE X
Theatre in the X was created in 2013 to provide the people of West Philadelphia and the African American community at large the opportunity to see professional quality theater in their own neighborhood for no cost. By removing the barriers of location and price the audience is able to experience theater that they possibly would not be able to access otherwise. Theatre in the X also provides opportunities to playwrights, actors, directors, stage managers, DJs, sound engineers and vendors of color.   www.theatreinthex.com
 

As a multidisciplinary artist and cultural producer, Li employs strategies of D.I.Y media, immersive storytelling, eco-design and environmental justice to raise awareness of existential threats to self, community and humanity. Her artistic practice-what she calls the "art of survival"-addresses diverse ecology issues and threats to individual mind, body and spirit from structural/gun violence to un/natural disasters caused by climate change. Having lived through black outs and domestic terrorism and two prophesized apocalypses-Y2K and 2012-for over 2 decades her personal experiences and creative research continue to shape and inform her art and media. At the start of her practice, Li's work was received as fringe or speculative and she struggled to find support for projects funders and curators felt were too "far out" or fear-based.  To the contrary, her practice is actually grounded in reality and inconvenient truths focused on self-reliance, resilience, and radical hope for a better world.

Li Sumpter (ACG ’19 ’17 ’16, AiR ’18, WOO ’17) was invited to curate and facilitate a live variety show called The Escape Artist Mix Tape for the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) sometime in late May 2020. Due to social distancing, the event was cancelled. Li has now been invited to reimagine Escape Artist Mix Tape as an online program.

Escape Artist Mix Tape Volume 5: The Parable of Corona is a virtual program that will explore the themes of Octavia E. Butler's apocalyptic best seller Parable of the Sower and feature local and nationally recognized artists that have been inspired by her work. The grant will allow Li to reimagine the event in a digital space, provide tools for other impacted collaborators to participate such as black-led Theatre in the X, and support the creation of digital tools such as a zine for audience participation and during and post the event.

Li’s Cozy Catastrophe is a live-action gaming installation and pop-up skill-share outpost exploring threats to humanity and planet Earth through the lens of current events, speculative fiction, and Afrofuturism. 

Li Sumpter (WOO '17, ACG '17, '16) has been awarded the Art and Technology Residency with NextFab for her proposed work BOOM4REAL—a pilot series of eco-art objects serving artistic and emergency preparedness purposes, while engaging the communities they will be placed in.

Beyond their “ancient future” aesthetic and geometric and organic forms, these structural sculptures will also function as 1) short and long-term portable storage vessels for emergency supplies and survival resources, 2) interactive tools for community education and empowerment around emergency prep and disaster response and 3) a catalyst to initiate new or deepen existing community partnerships.

Li will continue work on her Graffiti in the Grass interactive graphic novel project, conceived and written by Li and illustrated by Eric Battle. Li will collaborate with a professional colorist to add full color to the three completed black and white promotional posters, develop and design a site-specific survival "pocket map," and design and print the survival zine, Pop Prophecy. The zines and pocket maps will be distributed at free emergency preparedness and direct action workshops Li will facilitate at North Philly Peace Park, designated partner sites across "Peace Town," and other select public events, community gatherings, and direct actions this summer. 

Li participated in the upcoming comic book culture group exhibition, opening June 16 at the new Rush Arts Philly (RAP) gallery in Logan, North Philadelphia, with poster art from her graphic novel project Graffiti in the Grass. In conjunction with the exhibition, Li had the opportunity to facilitate an art workshop at Amalgam Comics and Coffee House, which allowed her to develop important relationships with the community of comic book nerds of color in Philadelphia and increase visibility for the project in Logan and Kensington. Funds were used to print and frame the art and to purchase workshop supplies.

Li Sumpter will create and publish a limited edition, 10-page prologue episode for her three-volume epic of speculative fiction, Graffiti in the Grass, which explores the mystery and mythology behind UFO and crop circle phenomena through the lens of hip-hop, afrofuturism and indigenous traditions. Graffiti in the Grass aims to ignite the survivor spirit in us all around environmental and existential crises, migration/displacement, spiritual wellness and mental health with a focus on suicide stigmas among young women of color. She will also commission the illustration, design and printing of three unique limited edition promotional posters. Posters and publications will be distributed locally for free to communities of color in West Philadelphia with priority to young women of color, black and brown urban farmers and environmental justice artists and advocates.