SUGA’

2026 / PERFORMANCE + VISUAL ART + RITUAL

A BUNDLE OF STICKS PRODUCTION
Co-created & co-written by
Derrick Miller-Handley + Dazié Grego-Sykes

Work sample featuring the contributions of Derrick Miller-Handley

THE WORK

SUGA’ is a participatory performance ritual where visual art, movement, language, sound, and audience encounter become inseparable.

Audiences enter a space populated by sculpture, portraiture, and wearable objects, encountering them first as artworks. As the performance unfolds, these objects are activated and transformed—becoming instruments, characters, ritual objects, and witnesses.

Through the shifting relationship between object, performer, and audience, SUGA’ explores Blackness, queerness, gender expansiveness, ancestral memory, intimacy, and pleasure, inviting audiences not simply to witness the work, but to enter its world.

Performance Excerpt

Excerpt from SUGA’, featuring three interconnected passages from the performance: “Terms and Conditions,” “Again,” and “Blackness Spills.”

Performed at EastSide Arts Alliance
Oakland, CA · May 2026

“Terms and Conditions,” written by Derrick Miller-Handley; “Again,” co-written by Derrick Miller-Handley and Dazié Grego-Sykes; “Blackness Spills,” written by Derrick Miller-Handley

MY PRACTICE within Suga’

As part of my co-creation role with SUGA’, I collaboratively shaped the work’s development from its earliest stages through performance and art directed the production, shaping its visual world. I personally created all of its sculptures, portraits, and wearable artworks, as well as one of its video pieces.

SUGA’ brings together the disciplines I use within my current practice—sculpture, installation, image-making, design, ritual, and performance—while stretching into new territory with writing for the piece. I’m interested in how objects hold collective and ancestral memory and meaning, and what happens when the boundaries between object, environment, performer, spoken word, audience, and the spiritual begin to collapse.

The objects I create are not scenery, props, or costumes. Through their encounters with performers and audiences, sculptures are transformed, bodies inhabit wearable artworks, and portraits become icons, memories, and witnesses—and the words spoken over them become invocations.

The Objects AND Entities

  • Self-Portrait

    Gypsum polymer, fiberglass, acrylic, wood, canvas, nylon, aluminum

    Sculpted from life and developed over several years, this self-portrait began long before SUGA’ was conceived. Its elongated neck and upward gaze emerged intuitively. I discovered their meaning once I brought the sculpture into the world of SUGA’. With each performance, the sculpture is transformed by shimmering liquid poured over its up-stretched form. Each layer is a record of surrender to an uncontainable Blackness and queerness. SUGA’.

  • The Child

    M&Ms, resin, acrylic, wood panel

    A recreation of a photograph of me at five years old, constructed from more than 4,500 M&Ms, each placed by hand, one by one. The candy draws from my own childhood memories—coveting their sweetness, bright colors, the sound of them rattling together, the joy and reward they promised. The painstaking assembly of the image becomes a meditation on my own construction as a child—the people, expectations, messages, and forces that (mis)shaped my sense of self.

  • Miz Sequoia

    M&Ms, resin, acrylic, wood panel

    More than 4,500 M&Ms, again placed by hand one by one, reconstruct an image of me in my drag persona—Miz Sequoia. But here, the act of construction shifts: the self being assembled is of my own design and making. Rather than learning how to get it right, I decide for myself what “right” can be.

  • The Navigator

    Synthetic crochet braids, acrylic pony beads, EVA foam, cotton mesh

    More than 2,500 braids and hundreds of beads transform a contemporary expression of Black cultural tradition and beauty into a living embodiment of collective ancestral memory—a spirit guide carrying the wisdom of those before us, beside us, and yet to come as we journey forward.

    Embodied by Amber Julian.

  • Spirit Figure: The Navigator

    Foam mannequin head, crochet braids

    Named for spirit figures found across African sculptural traditions, this object anchors The Navigator’s presence within the installation when The Navigator is not embodied in performance.

  • The Siren*

    Cowrie shells, assorted shells, bone, goose feathers, pheasant feathers, jute, EVA foam, mat board, fabric. *Cowrie collar by Elvyfinds of Nairobi, Kenya

    The spiritual embodiment of dark feminine energy, sensual power, and infinite truth. Associated with air and water, she offers the dangerous invitation to liberation—revealing the deepest truths of self, a knowledge so powerful it can unravel the mind and transform the soul.

    Embodied by Savannah Schmidt.

  • Spirit Figure: The Siren

    Foam mannequin head, cowrie shells, stone beads, goose feathers

    Named for spirit figures found across African sculptural traditions, this object anchors The Siren’s presence within the installation when The Siren is not embodied in performance.

Collaboration AS material

SUGA’ is also an extension of a collaborative artistic practice I have developed alongside performance artist and poet Dazié Grego-Sykes over many years.

Our process is iterative and conversational. Writing can provoke an object. An object can change a performance. A movement can reveal something about an image that I did not understand when I made it. An idea moves from one of us to another and returns changed.

Rather than designing a visual world around a completed performance, I am interested in allowing the visual work to participate in the development of the performance itself.

That exchange extends beyond the two of us. The bodies, histories, instincts, and creative choices of our collaborators enter the work, as does the audience. SUGA’ is ultimately constructed through relationship: between disciplines, between artists, between objects and bodies, and between the people who make the work and the people who enter it.

SUGA’ · A Bundle of Sticks Production · Presented at EastSide Arts Alliance in Oakland, California · May 2026 · Co-created by Derrick Miller-Handley and Dazié Grego-Sykes · Co-written by Derrick Miller-Handley and Dazié Grego-Sykes · Directed by Dazié Grego-Sykes · Art direction, artwork, and installation by Derrick Miller-Handley · Movement, choreography and performance by Savannah Schmidt · Performance by Amber Julian · Drums by Andre Schoch