Paloma McGregor’s iterative performance project, Building a Better Fishtrap, is rooted in the reclamation of her 91-year-old father’s vanishing fishing tradition. The work centers on three central questions that arise when you leave your ancestral home: What do you take with you? Leave behind? Return to reclaim?

In Phase 2, a solo work commissioned by Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2016, McGregor enacts a ritual of remembering, both kaleidoscopic and intimate, through three distinct worlds. The work “commands its audience receive and witness with the same stamina the soloist McGregor rigorously expels,” reflected Ni’Ja Whitson on InfiniteBody. “The doing in this work is its magic. And McGregor does both the subtle and grand with such intention, the magic hypnotizes.”

During her 2016-18 Live Feed residency at New York Live Arts, McGregor is creating the third major installment of the Fishtrap project, an ensemble work that will premiere on the Bronx River in July 2018, supported by MAP Fund.