For the first iteration of R.S.V.P., installed at Manhattan’s Just Above Midtown Gallery in 1977, Nengudi invited longtime collaborator Maren Hassinger to respond to the sculpture with improvisational movement. In one performance—she has done many over the years—Hassinger picks her way through the web of nylon, gathering several clumps of sand in her hands like a deflated bouquet, and slowly lifts the mass in the air, again and again. “I guess with everything I do, I want the viewer to respond to it, and so, répondez s’il vous plaît. That’s what you get on all your invitations,” Nengudi said. The R.S.V.P. work is almost like an instrument or a musical score, the shape of the sculpture transformed by the actions of those who play it.
Nengudi and Hassinger have now collaborated for over 40 years. They were both trained in dance and met in the 1970s while working as part of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program–a WPA-style initiative to employ artists. Together, they were part of Studio Z, a collective of Black artists, musicians, and writers in Los Angeles that pushed the boundaries of art.
“I don’t think there’s a man, woman, or child—especially two Black women—that have had a sustaining working relationship for that long,” Nengudi said. “And when we had some really funky times and we were 2,000 miles apart, the thing that held us together was this commitment to art,” she said. “Because we believe so much in collaboration. We believe in unity. We believe in bringing the best out in each other.”
Decades after the debut of the first R.S.V.P., Nengudi collaborated with Hassinger on further iterations of the sculpture. The piece was made to be constantly reinvented and asks viewers to consider our relationships to others, our bodies, and the spaces we inhabit in an environment that’s always changing.
The series On Making History, part of AAAHI’s ongoing oral history project, explores how Black artists remember, record, and rewrite history. Explore more oral histories here.
