OTA: Performing Artist in New York

About OTA

OTA is a performance project that takes its name from Ota Benga, whose life was exploited in early-20th-century American spectacles, including a notorious display in New York at the Bronx Zoo. Presented in NYC rooms such as 3 Dollar Bill, the work treats archival history as material rather than decoration. It draws on documentary strategies—text, testimony, and reframing—to examine how institutions manufacture “difference” for public consumption. The approach favors clarity over spectacle, leaving the audience to sit with the ethics of looking.