Inside the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) gallery, rows of church pews face a glowing projection. Onscreen, a Black church service merges with scenes of Chicago’s ballroom scene, an underground subculture of Black and Latine queer dancers. 

Nearby, a sculpture of Yoruba twins — draped in Palm Sunday branches and braced by Black baby dolls — commands the floor. As one twin smiles in praise, the other clutches a gun to ward off danger in a world that isn’t always welcoming.

This is the world of Namir Fearce, an interdisciplinary artist and dual 2025 McKnight Media Artist and Jerome Foundation Fellow. His latest work is on view this weekend at MCAD. 

The arts calendar continues this weekend at The Cedar, where comedians of color take the stage for a night of stand-up comedy, and in St. Paul, where poets, rappers and R&B artists turn an arcade into a Black History Month variety show. 

Namir Fearce’s holy ballroom

For the annual MCAD-Jerome Fellowship Exhibition, Fearce built a sanctuary that moves fluidly across sculpture, film and music to map the intersections of home, Black identity and queer performance. 

“If something feels a bit stuck or missing in one medium, I simply move to another and this helps to keep things flowing,” Fearce said. “The Jerome Fellowship really gave me the time and space to think about what it is that I want to contribute to my practice and what it is that I want to contribute to the world.”

For Fearce, the church and the ballroom are “cultural productions and ancient technologies of survival.” 

“Both are spaces of elevated experience but one is regarded as holy and sanctified, while the other is salacious and sacreligious,” he said. “I truly understood them and saw the throughlines and parallels being a participant in both spaces.” 

Raised in north Minneapolis by two poets, he was immersed in Afrocentric education at Minneapolis’ Harvest Best Academy and, at age 9, he began practicing poetry and visual storytelling at Juxtaposition Arts. 

Though he was born in the North, the Deep South lived in his house, filled with the food, dialects and memories of elders who migrated from Mississippi in the early 1980s. 

“I was troubled by the fact that we had found ourselves in Minnesota in search of home and progress, and had yet to find that home,” Fearce said. “I began to investigate and research the artery of the Mississippi River as a connecting force and migratory past. I began to understand the Mississippi River as a homeland.”

Fearce has a busy year ahead. This spring, he plans to release a dance record, followed by a full-length album in collaboration with Sol Salvation, an all-Black, nonreligious choir he founded in 2024. Experimenting with funk, blues, hip-hop and gospel, Fearce will explore themes of community, love, wildness, futurity and faith.

“I’ve kind of allowed myself to be silly and have fun and express from a place that isn’t so attached to this duty I carry and live with,” he said. “My dance EP is set to come out first and kind of fertilize the ground for me. I’m taking a slower approach to building the music for the album.” 

His latest visual work at MCAD appears alongside Ger Xiong’s embroidery, Nik Nerburn’s sculptural forms and Amy Usdin’s fiber-based installations.

Comedy across borders

Four comedians will take the stage at The Cedar for the “Funny Shades of Chocolate” show, presented by Minneapolis-based Hahamasala Comedy Productions. 

“We’re happy to bring stand-up comedy back to the Cedar Cultural Center after over a year since their last comedy show,” said comedian Atul Patel, founder of Hahamasala Comedy Productions. “The idea is that we can achieve unity by laughing together at a multicultural event in which we see more closely how we’re all humans who can relate to each other and who all deserve the same rights and dignity.” 

Local comics, including Patel, Kelechi Jaavaid and René Humberto Valdiviezo, will join headliner Ray Lau, a Los Angeles-based comic who has appeared on Netflix Is a Joke’s “Introducing” series. 

Watch his “Chipotle bean scheme” bit to see what Minneapolis is in for. 

Black History Month celebration

Twin Cities artists Joe Davis, Lt. Sunnie, KPW, and Taylor Ngiri Seaberg are taking over Can Can Wonderland on Saturday night with a Black History Month show featuring poetry, rap, hip-hop and R&B performances. 

The 21-and-older event includes free arcade games, a DJ set by Ratliff and live painting from Jigzart. Attendees can support neighbors in need by bringing nonperishable food or donating to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota throughout the night. 

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