Join us at MoAD for aperformance and activation of UNBOUND:Art, Blackness & the Universe with Poet & Performer Sage Ni’Ja Whitson.

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The Rituals for the Flying series, site-specific multimodal conjurings, activate Whitson’s book, Transtraterrestrial:Dark Matter and Black Divinities leading witnesses through unworldings that amplify the dark through the aches of what is. At MoAD Whitson, as Trans Trappist the Extraterrestrial, activates the halls, walls,and works of MoAD’s Unbound: Art, Blackness, and the Universe. 

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Since 2017, Whitson has created a constellation of art|works, entitled The Unarrival Experiments, projects centering dark matter and dark energy through a Transembodied lens. The works connect astrophysics, Yorùbá spirituality, and other African Cosmologies, building what they’ve coined a “sacred scientific”. At MoAD Whitson presents a meditation between UNBOUND and Transtraterrestrial  - part performance reading, part ritual, part outdoor space activation.

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The performance will be followed by a book signing.

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Sage Ni’Ja Whitson is a Queer & Transgender artist who conjures across media. Whitson’s anti-disciplinary constellation of art has received international awards and recognition, including a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Visual Arts Award, Creative Capital Award, two Bessie Awards, Dance USA Fellowship, and a United States Artist Fellowship. Via The Unarrival Experiments, Whitson’s multi-form epic on dark matter and dark energy, they exemplify a critical intersection of the sacred and conceptual in science, technology, art, ceremony, and text.

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Their debut manuscript, Transtraterrestrial: Dark Matter and Black Divinities (November 2025, Wesleyan University Press) has garnered early praise from Publishers Weekly, Autostraddle, the Library Journal, and the Chicago Review of Books. Commissions for their works include the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Montévidéo (Marseille, France), the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, New York Live Arts,and festival commissions Tanzkongress, BAM Next Wave Art, and the CCA Biennale. Whitson is currently a full professor at the University of California, Riverside, where they served as the inaugural chair of Black Study from 2023-2025. Whitson is the great-grandchild of a root worker and a proud legacy bearer, ritual leader, and practitioner of familial and ancestral Spiritual traditions.

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About the Book

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A two part book reimagining dark matter and the dark

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Transtraterrestrial is an experimental book that documents Sage Ni'Ja Whitson's ground breaking performance pieces, blending African Diasporic practices with innovative methodologies to explore themes of gender, sexuality, race, and spirit. Divided into two parts—The Unarrival Experiments and Counterproposals—the work delves into the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, and Blackness through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens.

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In the performances of The Unarrival Experiments, the audience is led on a cosmic journey guided by the space conductor, Trans Trappist the Extraterrestrial. This section of the book traverses the dark as both an ancestor and embodied transgender technology, asking profound questions: How do you perceive what cannot be seen? What if Blackness refuses to arrive, existing in the realm of the unarrival? Counterproposals delves into Yorùbá Cosmology, astrophysics, and the concept of the "blackest black," to explore a Black Futurity where queerness and transness are celebrated and centered. The book includes a fusion of letters, poems, photographs, and speculative writings. Color images throughout the book invite readers into the immersive worlds of performance and installation, offering a rich, layered experience of Whitson's unique artistic vision.

This program is presented in conjunction with the current exhibition UNBOUND:Art, Blackness & the Universe, on view through August 16, 2026.

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