Sweet Land: A New Opera by the Industry

Sweet Land is the result of a highly collaborative and multi-perspectival approach. Composer Du Yun is a Chinese immigrant whose recent work originates from what she states "is a lack of understanding and empathy around immigration." Her last major opera, Angel's Bone, won a Pulitzer Prize for music and explores the psychology behind human trafficking. Composer Raven Chacon, United States Artists fellow and winner of the Creative Capital Award, is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Librettist Douglas Kearney is a poet whose "polyphonic diction pulls history apart, recombining it to reveal an alternative less whitewashed by enfranchised power" (BOMB Magazine). Librettist Aja Couchois Duncan is a mixed-race Ojibwe writer who works to advance equity and social justice. Cannupa Hanksa Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st-century Indigeneity. He co-directs Sweet Land with Yuval Sharon, the Founder and Artistic Director of The Industry and a 2017 MacArthur Fellow.