Lenape Sippu: Call Her By Her Name

Window installation open: (Free to view) Mar. 20 – Apr. 20, on Wednesdays and Fridays from 12:00PM–5:00PM at the Bride (5212 Market St)

Processional performance and neighborhood clean-up: (RSVP here) Saturday, Apr. 20 from 1:00PM-4:00PM (Begins at Freedom Greens + Garden (5200 Pine St), proceeds down 52nd Street, and finishes at Painted Bride (5212 Market St))

About “Lenape Sippu: Call Her By Her Name”

Lenape Sippu: Call Her By Her Name is a window display, soundscape, and performance that will take place in and around the West Philly neighborhood surrounding Painted Bride. On Saturday, April 20, 2024 the window display will be the backdrop for a performance that will take place in the neighborhood surrounding 52nd Street SEPTA station and Painted Bride. Dancers, line drummers, musicians, storytellers, and performance artists will process to the Painted Bride space where they will be met with music, a dance party, free chair massages, and performances.

This piece will shed light on histories of Black and Indigenous communities who have lived and worked on the southern portion of the Delaware River. Delaware River is a colonial naming of this river and Lenape Sippu is the name of this river.

Call Her By Her Name, Lenape Sippu.

The window installation by Emma White Thunder and Heidi Wiren Kebe features the words of Lenape historian and scholar Karelle Hall and archival images of Propelled Animals, Lenape Sippu, and Philadelphia. Audiences can access bARBER’s soundscape by scanning QR codes posted outside Painted Bride. Together, the window display, soundscape, and performance become a multilayered work seeking to heal our relationship with the past through its presentation of suppressed languages and overlooked histories; heal our relationship with our bodies through dance, music, and ritual; heal our relationship with the landscape by encouraging the collection of trash that might otherwise wash into the waterway. It considers how our harmful, destructive role in our ecology is a direct result of our violent histories – by decolonizing our minds and bodies can change how we live and act.

Featuring Esther Baker, Emma White Thunder, Tchin, Positive Movement Drumline, Heidi Wiren Kebe, bARBER, Chloe Marie, Boubacar Djiga, Samara Byrd, Annie Peterson, Janae Broadnax, and YaFave Trashman.

About the artists

Featured artists:

• Esther Baker (organizer/choreographer)
• Emma White Thunder (sculptor)
• Heidi Wiren Kebe (sculptor/performer)
• bARBER (Sound design for QR code install)
• Tchin (storyteller/performer)
• Positive Movement Drumline “Put Down the Gunz & Pick up some Drumz” (music performance)
• Papa Djiga (music performance)
• Chloe Marie (dancer)
• Samara Byrd (dancer)
• Temple University Dance students: Babe Maldonado, Malcom Ellis, Mayte Olmedilla, Sena Atsugah
• Ya Fav Trashman (activist/SEPTA sanitation)
• Raquel Monroe (installation interview)
• Mamapalo Mokeyane (chair massage)

Esther Baker is a choreographer, performance artist, and a co-founding member of Propelled Animals, an interdisciplinary art collective. She co-organizes groups of artists for projects that are multidisciplinary, site-responsive, and collectively derived, aiming for an ethic of shared leadership and decolonizing practices. She recently did projects with Philadelphia Contemporary, Trade School Philadelphia, The Schuylkill Center, ArtYard, NJ, La Ville En Mouvement Dakar, Senegal, No New Idols Festival in Riga, Lativa, The Englert Theatre Iowa City, and BAAD Bronx. She was an AIR at Marin Headlands, a recipient of a NY Live Arts Suitcase Fund, FCA Grantee, Grant Wood Fellow, and a Cultural Envoy in Guinea, Botswana, and South Africa. She is adjunct faculty at Temple University and has an M.F.A. in Dance from UCLA and B.A. from Bowdoin College. She lives in occupied Lenapehoking/South Philly and is a Licensed Massage Therapist.

Founded in 2014, Propelled Animals is a group of artists, dancers, scholars, musicians, and designers who embed innovative and provocative art in unconventional spaces. We are committed to creating work that interrogates, challenges, and ultimately attempts to dismantle the systemic “isms” of oppression. We adapt our projects and processes to address the specific needs of the communities we engage. Our work is centered on art as social action and ritual as performance. Propelled Animals are recipients of a MAP Fund, NPN grant, and USAI grant.