Join us on Sunday, December 6th 2020, 4-6 pm ET for Mother Tongue: Performances Part Two virtual evening with works by Bianca Falco, Jorge Rojas and María Verónica San Martín.
Register on ZOOM: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIlduisqzIiGtRVZfHo82vm5C6w8HkH194e
Jorge Rojas, tether, 2018, Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival, Salt Lake City Public Library. Photo: Winston Inoway
Jorge Rojas
tether
tether is a participatory performance by Jorge Rojas in which the artist attempts to embody experiences of trauma undergone by undocumented immigrants-- refugees and asylum seekers--during three different stages of the migration process: before, during, and after immigration.
website
About the Artist: Jorge Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist, independent curator and educator from Morelos, Mexico. He studied Art at the University of Utah and at Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Rojas makes performance that examines cultural, social, and mediated forms of communication. He uses performance to bring people together, as well as provoke public participation, action, and collaboration. Rojas's interests include spiritual histories, interpretations of ancient rites and customs, institutional critique, and responding to abuses of power. In recent years, his performance work has focused almost entirely on drawing attention to and denouncing political injustice and racial tensions in the U.S. Rojas’ work and curatorial projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues including Queens Museum of Art, Museo del Barrio and White Box in New York City; New World Museum and Project Row Houses in Houston; Ex Convento del Carmen, Guadalajara; FOFA Gallery at Concordia University, Montreal; Utah Museum of Fine Arts and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. Since 2015, Rojas is director of learning and engagement at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, where he oversees education, community engagement, and programming. Rojas is a passionate advocate for advancing racial and cultural justice through the arts.
Bianca Falco, Skin/Toxic/Terrae, 2020, 30 minutes
Bianca Falco
Skin/Toxic/Terrae
Skin/Toxic/Terrae is an environmental performance about the toxic waste disaster in Campania, Italy, artist Bianca Falco’s native land. Falco started a dialogue with mourning mothers from the region who lost their children to cancer caused by the toxicity of the dirt, water, and air. They wish to stop the illegal toxic waste dumping in the region. Language underlines Falco’s performance, as she narrates the stories rooted in her land-which, she notes, “as an immigrant myself, I long to help and I am deeply tied to. Language is a connection to what I am truly or what I was. The same language allows these mothers to share their loss.”
Skin/Toxic/Terrae became more personal as the project’s composer, Falco’s brother, who lived in the area, passed away in July 2020 from non-hodgkin’s lymphoma. Throughout the performance, different actions take place symbolizing the decay of the body due to the environment’s toxicity.
website
instagram
About the artist: Bianca Falco is a melting pot. She was a ballet soloist, a Butoh dancer, she danced for Murray Louis in Italy, came to NY on scholarship at the Nikolais and Louis dance Lab. She was “adopted” by Ellen Stewart. At LaMama she was exposed to experimental and classical theater and since 1997 she created movement for actors and regular people for several productions. Her works have staged internationally. In 2017 LaMaMa produced her project “Terra dei Fuochi/Land of Fires. Chashama granted her a residency for the project as well. Same year she was a teaching artist in India and was invited to dance in Singapore. In 2018 she toured Italy, performed at “Performance is Alive” in Miami. She co-directs since 2019 PassTRESpass, a project with and for refugees in Athens. She is from Napoli, one of the most creative, and sometimes, challenging cities in the world. Through dance, she learned that she could transcend difficulties through translating it into modern dance. She hopes to lead everyone to a different perception, a different place, where limitations are beautiful and a key for people to get together and find solutions to social issues as well as personal ones.
Maria Veronica San Martin, Dignidad, 2018, performance, live music by Diego Las Heras at The National Archive of Chile, Santiago. Photo: Catalina Riutort
María Verónica San Martín
Dignidad
Dignidad is a performative work based on the archive of a hidden community founded in 1961 by former Nazi officers in Southern Chile currently held at the National Archive of Chile. Colonia Dignidad was an isolated colony characterized by torture, execution, and child abuse and a site for clandestine operations of the Pinochet regime and the CIA. Based on thorough archival research, including unreleased audiotapes from 1978, María Verónica San Martín interprets the colony's violent culture by restaging spaces of segregation and repression through moveable metal sculpture activated through choreography. Deconstructing symbols of power, the work evokes the architecture of bunkers and cells, thereby embodying the political machinery uncovered within the archive. For The Immigrant Artist Biennial the artist presents video documentation from various stagings of Dignidad and a short lecture.
About the artist: María Verónica San Martín (1981, Santiago-Chile) is a New York-based artist who explores the impacts of history, memory, and trauma through prints, artist books, installation, sculpture, and performance. She received her MA in Book-Arts from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, Washington D.C. San Martín attended the Whitney Museum ISP, NYC, 2018, was a scholar at the Center for Book Arts, NYC, 2017, an artist-in-residence at Art OMI, Ghent, NY (2016) and was awarded two National Art Funds from Chile. She has had solo exhibitions at The Museum Meermanno, The Hague, ND, 2019; the Chilean National Archives, 2018; BRIC, Brooklyn, 2017; the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, 2013, and group exhibitions at The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2020; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Artists Space, NYC, 2018; and The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, 2016. Her work is in more than 50 collections including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Centre Pompidou, Paris. San Martín has been performing and lecturing her “Moving Memorial” series and Dignidad project since 2016. She currently teaches at CBA, NYC, and Penland School of Craft, NC, while curating a Photo & Book Art Fair at the Art Museum of the Americas in D.C.