The Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art welcomes Indira Allegra, Spring 2025 Dorothy Liskey Wampler Distinguished Artist and Cultural Connections Artist-In-Residence

In Freshwater Hymns / Rituals of Becoming, NY-based artist Indira Allegra presents a performative installation in which weaving looms, modified to become electrical instruments, are surrounded by immersive sound and video. Working with local performers and musicians, Allegra focuses on Black's Run, a small creek that runs through Harrisonburg, as well as the abstract relationship of water to the city and its residents. The viewer is invited to engage with a meditation on land, space, movement, and local identity, including Appalachian shape note singing.

Indira Allegra Artist Statement

Tributaries are freshwater streams that find their way overland to larger rivers that ultimately make their way to the ocean. Without these humble streams, larger waterways would soon grow quiet. In this way, we can also think of tributaries as questions that allow our imagination of ourselves and our environments to open up into larger perspectives that touch the world like an Atlantic. The fate of water and the fate of people are undoubtedly intertwined. 

Black's Run, while often overlooked for its polluted past, weaves its way through the body of Harrisonburg like a weaver's thread, sometimes visible on the surface and sometimes hidden underneath, but at all times binding the cloth of the city together. In Freshwater Hymns / Rituals of Becoming, the voice of this humble stream offers a ritual pathway for us to follow into a brilliant dream of who we are becoming. Using this tributary logic, this performance project offers the community of Harrisonburg three questions:

When waterways are uncovered what music is possible?  
How can the clearing of water clarify how we want to be with each other?
What can the nature of water teach us about interconnectedness and freedom?

Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art

James Madison University
820 S. Main St. Harrisonburg, VA 22807


TUES - SAT, 11AM - 5 PM DURING THE ACADEMIC YEAR | Closed until February 4, 2025

Phone  /  (540) 568-6918
Email  /  dukehallgallery@jmu.edu