DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren

Bio

DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren is a queer artist, educator, and organizer from Catawba Indian Nation whose work ranges from performance to installation art to community education to food sovereignty to language revitalization. Since 2019 he has consulted for Catawba Nation on a variety of projects including corroding the Catawba Language Project, developing cultural curricula, several food sovereignty initiatives, and other community education projects while maintaining an active life as an artist and performer throughout the US.

In 2014 he graduated with a Bachelors in Music from Vanderbilt University where he studied Voice and Composition with a focus on socially engaged performance and the use of extended vocal technique and emerging methods of composition. During his time at Vanderbilt he received several awards including a Summer Research Fellowship that allowed him to spend a summer in New York City creating new work including Vigil: Drone Strike in Memoriam, Snapping Turtle || Wishing Well, and 8033237638. These works and more can be found at delesslin.com

After graduating, DeLesslin moved to Washington, DC where he worked on digital literacy and became involved in the vibrant theater community as a performer, audio designer, and devisor on productions such as Tyger (Banished Productions) and The Earth That is Sufficient (Annalisa Dias, Welders). From 2014 - 2016 he was a member of the Sparkplug 2.0 Fellowship where he developed works such as this is never coming out. DeLesslin’s work seeks to weave together his lived experience as a citizen of the Catawba Indian Nation, his fascination with the theatre of research, and various kinds of embodied practices.

DeLesslin’s longest ongoing project has been his Indigenous Corps of Discovery tours, which present unsettling tours of collections and museums, bringing to the forefront stories of indigenous peoples, colonization, and survivance. The tour began in 2016 at the Smithsonian’s Presidential Portrait Gallery and has also visited the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ “Go West!” Exhibition (2017).

In 2018 DeLesslin was recognized as a “40 Under 40 in Indian Country” by the National Council on American Indian Enterprise Development. He was selected as a 2017 Dreamstarter by Running Strong for American Indian Youth and in 2016 he was recognized as a “25 Under 25” by United National Inter Tribal Youth.

DeLesslin has performed, lectured, and exhibited throughout the U.S. including the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, College of Charleston, Vanderbilt University, Ithaca College, and more.