 Welcome everybody and thanks for coming. Good evening. I'm Kevin Staten, Deputy Director and Director of Collections and History and I'm really pleased to have you all here tonight. Tonight we're thrilled to open Disguise, Masks and Global African Art, an exhibition that connects the work of 25 contemporary artists with historical African masquerade using play and provocation to invite viewers to think critically about the world and their place within it. By putting on a mask and becoming someone else, artists reveal hidden realities about society including those of power, class and gender to suggest possibilities for the future. And I know we're all excited to hear what some of these artists have to say about this subject in just a moment. But first I want to take a minute to thank the terrific lenders to the exhibition who make the exhibition upstairs possible including Jerome and Ellen Stern, Joseph Viskovich and Lisa Goodman, Jack Shanewin Gallery, Jack Bell Gallery, Appalachso Gallery, Stevenson Gallery, Marianne Ibrahim Gallery, Moran Bondaroff, Zaira Smith Gallery, Lila Heller Gallery, Susan Englint Gallery, Sam Hillew, John and Nicole Denton-Fass, Gaston T. de Havanaughn, Susan Vogel, Corice Arman and Eugene and Harriet Becker as well as many of the artists themselves. Oh sorry! If I forgot anybody else, it's not because we don't appreciate you, it's because my list is wrong. I'm also pleased to thank our wonderful donors without whom this show simply would not be possible, J.P. Morgan Chase and company and Jerome and Ellen Stern. And now it's my pleasure to invite to the stage David Bigelow, Senior Vice President of Morgan Chase to say a few words. Thank you Kevin for that gracious welcome. It's great to see so many proud supporters of the arts. J.P. Morgan Chase is honored to be a sponsor, both last year of the OYER exhibit and also now Disguise. And can I say I was just up there for the first time and it is just a remarkable exhibition. It is so powerful, so mysterious and yet so instructive and I'm just really pleased that this has come together in such a way. When I think of the Brooklyn Museum, I think of its connection to the community, its connection to the world beyond Brooklyn, the international world, Africa, the African diaspora. It's a remarkable institution and this exhibition I think really exemplifies the best of what the museum has shown us it can do and we're thrilled to be here as sponsors. Thanks very much. Thank you David for your gracious words and for your ongoing support and continuing friendship. It's now my great pleasure to introduce my colleague and our curator of the Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands, Kevin Dumashell. Thank you Kevin. Welcome everyone. Today I'm really truly delighted to welcome you to this evening's opening of Disguise, masks and global African art on viewing the fifth floor in the special exhibition galleries. It gives me particular pleasure to invite you to an exhibition that so beautifully connects the historic creativity and dynamism of African masquerade with issues that could not be more immediately relevant today. The metaphorical thread that connects all of the art in this wide-ranging show is the idea of becoming. By putting on a mask and becoming someone else, the artists in this exhibition reveal and reinvent the hidden truths of the world around us. While Brooklyn is proud to be home to one of the largest oldest and finest collections of African art in the country, collections like masquerades themselves are dynamic things. While preserving an integral and essential link to our shared past, our interpretations and understandings of collections must also evolve in thoughtful dialogue with the communities to which they speak. And I'm proud to present our installation of disguise as part of our ongoing efforts to at once revitalize our African collections and to challenge us all to expand the horizons of what global Africa is and can be. I'd like to second Kevin's thanks to our dear friends, Jerome Lonellen Stern, as well as JP Morgan Chase for their tremendous support of the exhibition. And I also want to continue to thank our trustees, particularly Elizabeth Sattler, our board chair, Stephanie Androssia, our board president, for their continued support that allows us to present exhibitions like disguise. I'm also grateful for the support and leadership of our director, Anne Pasternak, and our newly installed chief curator, Nancy Spector. But an exhibition of this scale and complexity is truly a team effort, and I've been blessed to rely on the most dedicated team of museum professionals around. A show like this calls upon every department in the building, and I extend my thanks to you all, but I particularly want to single out Lance Singletary for his beautiful realization of a complicated multimedia, multi-sensory project. Alicia Boone, manager of adult programs, and her entire team for putting together a really killer set of programs that complements this show. I have to give a shout out to our amazing team of art handlers, painters, carpenters, and electricians who pulled off this installation in what felt like record time. And if you've been around the building, you've seen that there are major changes that have been happening throughout our galleries, and we've really been pulling out every stop to make all of the changes in the building possible in this exciting, quick time. And I, of course, have to thank Megan Bill, our curatorial assistant, who's kept my office running amidst all of this chaos. While many of the Disguise artists are Brooklynites through and through, the show, of course, was originally born out west at the Seattle Art Museum, and we owe curators Pamela McCluskey and Erika Masakoy considerable thanks for their vision, drive, and leadership in dreaming the show into existence in the first place, and for remaining such collaborative and collegial partners in allowing us to take the reins and like Masquerade itself to imagine Disguise's performance in a new environment. And so I really thank you both, Pam and Erika. Lastly, I'm thrilled to say that we're joined this evening by many of the Disguise artists themselves. I'm going to read off a quick list of the names of the artists involved and can I just ask that any of the artists who are here in the room rise and be recognized and will thunderously applaud them all at the end. So the artists in the show from A to Z include Leonce Raphael Arbogelu, Nick Cave, Edson Changas, Steven Cohen, Willie Cole, who may be here, Jacob Dwight, Hassan and Hussain Essap, Brennan Fernandez, we'll hear more from in a minute, Alejandro Bousman, Gerald Machona, Nandifa Nantambo, Jean-Plaude Moschetti, Toyin Oji Odetola, Emetro Odubo, Warren Natasha Ogunji, Walter Ultman, Sondra Perry, who I know I saw, Sondra, Zina Sarawiva, Jacoby Satterwhite, Paul Anthony Smith, Adajoketur Biele, Ike Ude, Sam Vernon, William Villa Londo, and of course, Ziya Wolfach. We thank all of our disguise artists. And at this point, I'm going to invite Brennan Fernandez, Nandifa Nantambo, and Ziya Wolfach up onto the stage to join me for a brief discussion about some of the ideas in the show. And when we're finished with the talk, I'll ask Pam Erica and the artists present to join us for a group photo to sort of celebrate before we wrap up. But Brennan, Nandi, and Ziya, please join us. Well, thank you all for taking a few moments out of an exciting celebration tonight of your work and the ideas here to talk a little bit about what the show is attempting to convey to our visitors. You know, I say that the show is ultimately about that sort of fundamental sort of interesting metaphor and contradiction in the idea of disguise. That by concealing one's own identity, by becoming someone else, you can reveal a truth that is hard to speak and perhaps impossible to speak in your own persona. And I was wondering if just by way of introduction of each of your sort of backgrounds and works, maybe we could talk a little bit about how your work sort of plays with this idea of hidden truths. Sure. A lot of my earlier work and work as a kind of function now is sort of based on the kind of question of authenticity and the sense of self. And being born a Kenyan Indian fifth generation born in Nairobi, lived in Canada, lived in the Caribbean, in Trinidad and Tobago, living in currently in Brooklyn, the kind of idea of where is home, like the trajectory that identity is not static, identity is constantly in a position of being in flux. So when you talk about becoming, it makes sense to me because I feel like in the process of just being, my embodiment is, you know, so I feel like we want to define it. We want to say that it is. Yeah, it's always really fun to be on the panel with Brendan. Because I'm black, white, and Japanese and we did the Whitney program together like 10 years ago. And so I think just to name the time. But it's really fun because I actually think that we share a lot of similar kind of perspectives on this where it's the empathics, the project that I produced for the Brooklyn Museum and also for the Seattle Art Museum and UCLA is all about how can one become something? How can one become something that they may not necessarily identify with that they don't necessarily have the tools to actually engage with what are the, what is the infrastructure that needs to be in place in order for that becoming to happen for a more general audience. And not only what's the infrastructure that needs to be in place, but what actually is lost in the process of that becoming, right? So if everyone becomes a hybrid, if everyone becomes to, comes to know of themselves as someone who is a globalized subject, what happens to identification? What happens to ethnic solidarity? What happens to political mobilization movements? And it's complicated. And so that's what my work is generally about. And it's really fun to be with Brendan because I think that we've been thinking together for 10 years. And it's great to be in a show with you. Thank you. This is my show. We've been in many shows. And we've been in so many shows together. It's really fun. Well, I suppose for me the work that I've been creating over time has been centered around mythology and imagined reality in a way. I've always been interested in the boundary between the animal human and how within different types of mythologies, depending on I guess what culture you're from, there's been this intersection of the animal and the human over time. And so trying to understand that boundary between the two and also aspects of oneself, because I think the thing that human beings try and separate ourselves from is our animalistic element or those parts of ourselves that we can't really articulate or don't really want to deal with at times. So my interest has always been that in between uncomfortable space of attraction and repulsion. And I guess the tension that happens where you can't really figure out whether you really like something or whether you really don't. Which is sort of fundamental to the one of the sort of basic sort of processes of masquerade, which is this sort of uncertainty and this sort of uncanny moment that happens where you sort of enter a space where suddenly the normal rules don't apply. And you're invited to sort of think critically about ideas and your relationship to the world in a new and different way. And this issue of identity and sort of understanding oneself in relation to your world is really sort of one of the other sort of key themes that sort of emerges in the show that I think the title, Mass and Global African Art, is really quite interesting and quite revealing in a way because each of you comes to this exhibition of African art from very different backgrounds. And I'm curious sort of what being in a show of global African art means to you. Well, I think it's quite a complicated answer. I guess I've lived in Africa all my life. I'm from Africa. And at the same time, because of how education has worked, because of how globalization works, because of how something as simple as television works, there's this influx of either Europe or America in the lives of many African people. So I think this idea of having a very standard or a very standard idea of what Africa is about, what the people are about, how we all live doesn't really exist because it is a very big continent that obviously has a diverse group of people who have different cultural experiences as well. So I think that it's quite a complicated thing. I don't know if there's a real straightforward answer to what being an African is or what African art really looks like at the moment. Yeah, and I think I totally agree with that. I think for years, growing up in Kenya and then moving to Canada, even as a young boy, there was this idea that Africa was this cultural model at this place of the exotic, the primitive, the other. And for me, it's to break down those stereotypes, to say that we are a continent that is diverse with very specific kind of cultural histories and post-colonial histories, and to extend that and to give a voice to all of Africa. So when we still say Africa, we need to kind of think about it as this more diverse space. And I think the show like this is doing that and giving it from a contemporary viewpoint. And I think that's really exciting to kind of come together in a sense of solidarity to kind of give all of our voices but to have one voice at the same time as well. I'm also really excited that this idea of the diaspora is really embedded in all of our works. I think that, you know, Brendan's work incorporates ballet and its relationship to, you know, masquerade practices. And then Diva, you use these like metadors that mean, you know, like, I don't know what the specific relationship to your diasporic experience is, but that you feel comfortable in this globalized context to, you know, cite that. And like, you know, I cite each and every thing, but there's a kind of deep engagement. You know, I think that's actually like the something really, really exciting about all of our work is that we all really research and engage and deeply respond to something and respect the thing that we're citing and thinking about. And we consider it as it's like an intellectual equal, right? So something that was really important to me in the show was that the seway helmet masks were identified as technologies, right? It was important that it wasn't just a citation, it wasn't just like, oh, look, this is a cool thing, and I'm just going to like make something in response to it, that it's a technology that helps people transform from one form into another. And so the empathics and chymotech actually uses that research, that history, to think about what the potential for that history and that research is into the future. I think we all do that. You know, it's not, it's not just a, it's not a bricolage. It's not just, oh, look, this is cool. Yeah, it's not about the tropes. It's about, you know, giving a voice to those days and that history. Yeah, of course. Well, and naturally, I mean, that has been really one of the key sort of areas that I've really wanted to focus in our presentation here in disguise here at Brooklyn is connecting your practice to the practice of the artists that are represented by our collection. And I mean, and so you've sort of spoken to this a little bit already, but I'm curious how you sort of feel about that relationship being made more explicit in relation to your work, because it's a very particular way of framing your practice. And it's not one that is typically sort of done when you show in other galleries and other museums. And so I'm curious kind of what you feel is gained and lost in that sort of presentation. Well, I think for me, like the idea of like actually having the, you know, quote unquote, the artifact beside the work, it's an interesting juxtaposition. You know, you have a contemporary voice sort of speaking about it. And for me, I'm always curious about, you know, I always work with collections, I work with the archive. And I'm always thinking about the fact that African objects in museum collections don't have artists named to them. And so the kind of question of identity, the lack of identity, the kind of way, the idea that objects have, you know, very, you know, fickle provenance reports, because we don't know where they came from, because then there's that idea that they can be returned. And so I use that by analogy to them to speak to my sense of self or selves. And so I think for me to just suppose that it creates a stronger narrative. It kind of has this almost collaboration between the two. And I think that makes it more, for me, it's a strength. But I think it's not always the case that we're able to work so close with the collection, but I think it's really important. And I think this is the one thing that this exhibition from Seattle to the Fowler to the Brooklyn to work with like three different collections and to kind of see how they all are also so similar in the way that collectors would be certainly bring works in from certain parts of Western Africa and what was popular, what wasn't popular. And to kind of think about like then how that becomes the trope then and how we can then now, for me and for all of us, how we're breaking that down in the world for sure. My next, is that me? It's the line. So from my perspective, it's really similar to Brendan's. I come out of a tradition of institutional critique and I'm really interested in museum collections as a space of narratives that historically were important in a specific way and how to reimagine those historical narratives. I also, I actually, I mean, there are many things, but one is that when I first went to the Seattle Art Museum to do a site visit, I went through the collection with Pam McCluskey and one of the first things that I experienced was how can we create the magical experience that people would experience from an original object in an actual museum context and activate an object with the invisible content that you don't actually see. And so I think that's what I've tried to do with this installation. I stand on the fence here in a way because on one hand the artifacts that we have in museums are, you know, like has been said, from a very specific lens and because of the fact that we don't have a lot of written history around what certain objects were used for or their significance within a specific space and time, we rely on historians and their accounts of how these objects were used and for me that doesn't tell a complete picture in a way. And so within a contemporary context, because we're all still alive and we're able to articulate on many levels how we want our work to be viewed or what we want a viewer to take from what we are showing, we're on a different level in a way. So for me in as much as there's a lot of strength in having these objects as part of the show, there's also a weakness in that a lot of the message in a way has also been lost. So the bridge isn't really complete in my thought. Yes, I think that's that is fair. I mean, I think, you know, if anything we're asking you as the contemporary artist to reach farther than is fair in a way. Yeah, but what if it's we're asking the audience to bridge that gap, right? Like maybe like the audience can, I mean it would be really exciting if the audience could stop thinking about the historicization of an object and start thinking about the activation of that object, right? And not just in its original context, but in its, you know, contemporary, like what would it look like to have contemporary masquerades, which is what you're doing with your work, right? We're able to talk about it in a very clear way, whereas the mask that was collected from 18, whenever doesn't really have the same voice. So for me, I think that's the sort of issue that I'm speaking on. The fact that we're able to activate a viewer to be able to view something in a particular way, whereas that object doesn't necessarily have the same voice. That same agency. Yeah, yeah, but what if what if it means that in the future, and as we move forward, the assumption is that object does. I mean, that's that's actually how I like think of these projects is that they're micro transformations, that they're not, you know, you know, sure, a whole overhaul of a system is fantastic, like that would be fantastic. And I think there are a lot of, in my research for the show, there were there there are many museums that are attempting to produce the actual ritual within the context of the museum. But then there's something else that's lost, right? So how do you get a museum audience to understand that the object isn't is quote unquote historical, but is activatable, and is also potentially something else, like it's usable for something that they identify what people identify with, like very clearly. And I think that's what we attempt to do. I mean, that's, it may not necessarily be clearer all the time. But, you know, how how can masquerade traditions, you know, function in contemporary 21st century society. But also thinking about how, you know, what was lost, you know, we've talked about loss in the beginning, or you mentioned the kind of process of loss through that you're becoming, but like the object being placed in a space away from its origin has lost something like that, that masquerade, I think that's what is the purpose of this, the main purpose of those dances aren't there. And like in my work with ballet, I question the, I'm a former ballet dancer, and I work a lot with the kind of questions of how ballet has no language. And so in the past, we've lost those historic dances. And so I kind of conflate those two, but then look at it through the postcolonial narrative of how the French colonized and kind of used that as two kind of forms of dance. And I kind of put them together. But the kind of idea that there's always that last process, that you know, that we can't, you know, so I think almost like we're the archive, like the archive is something to think about. And maybe how perhaps the camera or the document of how we document things is the way to re-perform. I think we're thinking about performance now and re-performing because we don't, you know, I feel like in all of my work, I want to install the body or instill the body back to those masks. But those dances, historically, we don't know what those dances are. It's like ephemeral. Yeah. Well, and I mean, and I think what I love about having your work here in the museum, in conversation with these collections is that it actually does sort of make, invites our visitors at least to understand that there's something kind of strange about a museum, right? I mean, particularly in looking at African art in the way that we look at it here. Well, I think when you talked about animals and the kind of idea of like the kind of humanness of how we kind of just put ourselves against, like, you know, that, you know, the primitive beast or something, it makes me think I grew up in Kenya, my father worked in the safari industry, and we'd always go in safaris as children. And one thing that you had to see was one animal kill another. And it was this kind of idea that you, in safari, you must watch an animal kill another. And I was always like, that's such a weird experience. But I think that because there's that primitiveness that we still embody, but in the museum, we're choreographed, we're all told how to act in a museum. Don't touch, don't speak out loudly. And so I also feel like the masquerader when they become, they become, you know, outside of their body, they can act badly. And they can act, they can misbehave, they can do the sort of thing. So I think there's something interesting about that. And really making sure that we can touch back to the idea of the animal that you're talking about. Yeah, I was excited about your hides. They're so amazing. They're so fantastic. Like a re-skinning and kind of human under the skin of an animal. That's like so intense and amazing. Thank you. One question that I'm sort of just curious to ask each of you, because each of you have been involved in the show from its inception in Seattle in a really sort of deep way, is sort of how your work has evolved over the last two or three years in relation to your participation in this project? Have you seen the idea of masks and disguise and becoming sort of infiltrating in interesting ways in your work? Or not? You know, I think being a sort of working artist in a way means that you're always in flux. So there's always changes that are happening within how you think about yourself, how you deal with your artwork. And I think for me being part of a show like this has been really interesting in that when I first started making work, I was very resistant to shows or categorizations that had anything very specifically to do with being African. And that was because I felt that it was too easy, too easy a category to put me into, because obviously I'm African. I'm from the continent. I look African. So it seemed to me that a lot of curators and I guess critics at the time felt that it was the easiest thing to kind of have me on all these African shows. So it's been really interesting to have a mind shift around that. I don't know whether it's a case of just growing up or thinking about things differently. But also being able to understand that having the platform to show one's work and also be able to articulate what you want somebody to take from the work is a very important part of how I guess an evolution or a growth happens as an artist. And so for me what's been happening is that I've been reaching into things like printmaking and painting and more I guess deeper into this unexplained space of what's uncomfortable. So not really working in a figurative way but more abstract and trying to understand the color black. So that's what's happened to me. So I am working in virtual reality and augmented reality. And the reason I started doing that is because I began to become more and more interested in the ways that digital technologies actually impact our contemporary lives because we're I mean many of you may already be on your smartphones. And I became deeply interested and engaged in how smartphones and virtual technologies are actually areas that will allow us for experiencing alternative forms of embodiment. And so I'm working on a project with lower Manhattan Cultural Council which opens at the Fulton Street Terminal. It was announced in the New York Times today which uses an augmented reality app that engages performers with virtual sculptures which happens in tandem with a big project at the Times Square Jumbotron monitors. And so there'll be performance that happens in relation to the kind of consumer landscape that the consumer advertising landscape that we're all very deeply accustomed to. So thinking about consumerism as a form of digital mass grade and attempting to create new potentialities for that form. That form is very ordinary. It's kind of tried and true. So what can we create that is new in that space? I'm kind of going back to the analog and I use my smart phone so much that I have carpal tunnel syndrome right now. So it's kind of the opposite. I'm going to stop using my phone and go back to using my body and kind of going back to my dance practice as a former ballet dancer who's injured who's old now. But think about I'm thinking about the history of ballet where ballet started as a way to bow to Louis XIV and think about the kind of idea of when one gives one body to one as a gesture of authority but also thinking about that through the bow at the end of a performance when you as an audience give back to the body. And so thinking about reinstating embodiment through the bow but again making the relation to mass grade and the kind of idea of the other body as well. And making the connection not through ethnographic dance but through modern dance being the other and ballet being the idea of Western culture. Still something happening in here. What are you doing Kevin? I am well I'm breathing right now in a couple of months. But beyond that the Netspit project here at Brooklyn is really going to be thinking about our collection and the way we display our collection and interpret our collection. And you know we have this temporary installation of our permanent collection double take African innovations downstairs now that is our attempt to sort of do a little bit of what we're also doing in disguise of pair contemporary works with historical works to find universal themes. But what I'm hoping to sort of learn actually through the process of watching our visitors engage with the show is how that works and how people react to it stories that seem to connect that don't connect and I really want to think critically about that in the next few months and how that'll apply to our galleries going forward. So we should have drinks. I would love that. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I want to you know before we wrap up I want to kind of give away the microphone a bit and see if you guys have questions for each other since you're here together. I'm throwing that I'm challenging you now to see yes. Can I can I Brendan can I have a still of one of your videos because they're really awesome. That's a question. Yes you may. Yes you may. I'll trade you for it. That's very boring. Maybe we should ask the audience. Maybe the audience. Yeah. Yes actually we do. We do have mics set up if there aren't any questions. Please actually I think Dexter Dexter. Maybe I'm sorry. Sure. So something I really enjoy about a traveling exhibition is the opportunity to speak to another collection and speak to another curator. So each curatorial vision has deeply impacted the way that the iteration of the project has actually actualized itself and how I imagine what the project looks like. So with Kevin we created a new didactic because he really wanted to put this very specific series of masks in the installation and so we kind of imagine together what that might look like. We had a series of studio visits and it was really fantastic with Pam. Where's Pam. So with Pam I visited Sam and had tons and tons of conversations with her and figured out like what this could look like within the context of her originating vision. So you know that's that's for me an amazing part of being in a traveling exhibition site specificity attempting to respond to I mean because I kind of think of it as like creating folk stories. Like how do you respond to the dreams and desires of the people that you meet and how do you incorporate them into the logics of the projects that you make. I would agree totally. It's I think the site specificity and working with specific collections and just having the allowance but the kind of conversation the dialogues that you have with individuals through the just the process is really important and I think that makes the difference as well. I think that it does create a complication and I suppose as the living artist someone going through that it it creates a weird dynamic because on one level you do want to be recognized and be on certain shows because that's the only way that you I guess continue working but then on the other you also don't want to feel like you're being ghetto-wise on some level so it's a complicated space and it's made even more complicated if you as an artist don't make the effort or don't find the language to be able to speak on how you'd like your work to be viewed or how you want viewers to understand what it is you're doing. So I think that unfortunately the categories can't really disappear in the time that we would all like them to but it's even more problematic if you don't allow yourself to become available to have conversations such as these so that you can make your voice a little bit clearer. It's a really good question. I you know I also think that more specificity would be better like not like okay so we have a show that is in response to African art so can't we have shows that are like European art I mean I don't know like I'm totally down with more specificity. Or would that be in the other direction a show inspired entirely by Mende art in that in that sense then or? Pardon me? Specifically a show inspired by Mende art to move in the other direction. It could be it could be a show that but what I was actually trying to articulate is you know when you have an exhibition which is dominated by European American artists to specify their specificity you know why not yeah I mean they're specific. There may be a resistance to that but descriptively it's just as specific as anything else. And this is coming from someone who believes that you know specificity is something that is deeply malleable and changeable and shifting constantly. So I don't think that you know African art or European art or American art are categories that are unchangeable over time and that's the reason why I identify as a part of institutional critique because the institution needs to be adjusted in relation to the shifting moments of its time. But simultaneously you know why not more specificity you know why not. And historically I mean that has actually been part of the role of African art in the Encyclopedia Art Museum which we now sort of expect as normal and as the sort of standard but we have to remember that 50 70 years ago was would have been a radical gesture. I should I should actually say I mean in contemporary art okay yeah maybe I shouldn't say that because there's a you know in contemporary art so Tom Sacks is downstairs Tom Sacks would never be identified as a white American artist but he is right. Sure. Yes. White male American artist. I think in my my thing I think it's about the idea of like like non-defining because like I am Kenyan I am all of these things but I happen to be in this show and it's defining under these these pretenses but I'm more interested in like playing on the idea of like querying where we kind of are more you know influenced by many different things like I think subculture like for example ballet as I mentioned many times is part of the work but also like for me growing up in suburban Ontario outside of Toronto punk rock music those kind of other kind of things have all influenced and created the the person I am and continues to have also for me it's about non-defining and being you know thinking about it through like a queer culture. Which is a whole other panel actually. Yes I would love to have actually in relation to the show too. I think we actually probably need to wrap up but I want to thank Nandi, Zaya and Brendan for joining us tonight.