MX Cooper

E-mail: mx.cooper@lehman.cuny.edu
Phone: 718-960-6095
Office: Speech and Theatre Building, Room 111
Office Hours: Wednesday 2:00 PM - 5 PM
Rank: Assistant Professor
Degrees and Sources of Degrees: B.A., George Washington Univ., Integrated Media Arts M.F.A., Hunter College

MX "Oops" Cooper is a multimedia performance artist and educator whose work centers hybridity, encouraging ecstatic disobedience as a path toward embodied wellness. Their vision is of a world where we can each be held in the fullness of our complexity. The party is the point of departure, a queer site of transnational Afro-diasporic imagining. Their creative practice links urban arts (breaking, house, vogue femme, rap, dj, vj, fashion), somatic studies (yoga, thai yoga massage, energy healing, sound baths), media studies, and gender studies. Through this transdisciplinary approach, their work questions whether consciousness itself is the primary medium. These mediums come together to welcome party people into a lush world of queer becoming.

Their work has been supported by the Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Dixon Place Dance Commission, and Research Foundation CUNY. Residencies include: Dance Theater Workshop Studio Series, CultureHub NYC Resident Artist, Ammerman Center for Art and Technology, Henan Normal University, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Barnard College, University of Florida, and Old Dominion University. Their work has been presented at New York Live Arts, Abrons Art Center, The Box, American Realness, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art Gala, Socrates Sculpture Park Benefit, and the GoDown Center in Nairobi Kenya, as a Cultural Envoy of the US State Department.

Cooper has performed in the work of choreographers and visual artist such as Jeffery Gibson, Rashaad Newsome, and Nicholas Leichter.  As a video designer, they have developed multichannel installations for Jumatatu Poe, Marjani Forte, Gia Cacialono, and Monstah Black. As a member of the HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? Collective, they have presented work in the Whitney Biennial, at the Witte de Witte Contemporary Art Center (Rotterdam, NL), and Art Basel Miami. 

A certified yoga instructor (500hr RYT) and practitioner of Thai Yoga Massage, trained in various forms of energy healing, they completed a BA in dance and religion at the George Washington University and completed an Integrated Media Arts MFA at Hunter College. For more information, visit their personal website www.mxoops.com.