UNYIELDING
Asia Stewart performed “Unyielding” in response to Entang Wiharso’s exhibition When Rabbits Eat Meat at Marc Straus Gallery. In “Unyielding,” Stewart returns to Abel Meeropol’s haunting “Strange Fruit,” a song made popular by Billie Holiday. Stewart’s looped and improvised performance of “Strange Fruit” gives her the impetus to confront a Southern magnolia tree and investigate where histories of racial terror and violence reside in its soil, a direct reference to Wiharso's experience of seeing a tree in South Carolina that had been used for lynching, and likening it to the corpse flower, a recurring image in the works on view.