Review: Layers of Erasure AC Institute, NYC July 2019 by Damariz Damken Layers of Erasure by Natacha Voliakovsky (Argentina) and Julha Franz (Brazil) is a performance that questions the ephemerality of the visible and tangible through our perception and subjection to social, political and gendered violence to unmask what is “real”. As Latin American artists Voliakovsky and Franz collectively position their political critiques by exercising their autonomy to transform the human body as praxis. They juxtapose their approaches to performance in conjunction to create complementary pieces that dialogue with one another, while simultaneously opening a conversation with the audience. Upon entering the performance space, the artists keep themselves out of plain sight, leaving the audience to wander a seemingly empty room and instead observe video recordings of each artist undergoing independent performances. These videos in themselves reflect a critical argument of the artists’ line of work and practice, and present yet another layer beneath which the artists choose to conceal themselves. Brazilian artist, Julha Franz, situates her piece from within a boxed space elusive to the eye as just another black wall in the gallery. However, upon closer observation, one notices light escaping from cautiously carved peeping-holes that outline a figure: one hole at eye level, two in the chest resembling nipples, and one centered at groin level. The viewer is compelled to find the so-far hidden artists and in looking through the holes, satiates their curiosity. As a queer femme artist, Franz’ line of work centers on transforming herself and body by exploring drag culture and playing with the hyper-politicized intersections of gender and sexuality through performance. Politically, Franz’ work protests and challenges pertinent issues of violent repression against queer and female identities. In hiding behind the black gallery walls, she performatically subjects herself back into the closet, physically and metaphorically. Franz’s piece interacts with the audience by also inviting them to participate in the ‘role-play’ of performance by becoming a voyeur, observing through the peeping-holes. We find Franz painting her face with makeup as she transforms into a Drag King. This vision immediately forces the audience to question the premise of Franz’s hiding and feels as though they are intruding in a private ritual, thus exposing the taboo. In continuing to observe through the remaining holes, the audience now as another character in the performance, observes how Franz chooses to reveal and conceal parts of her body. She leaves one side of her chest exposed and the other covers her nipple with a piece of black tape. Looking into the last hole, the viewer expects to observe the groin of a human body given its location but is instead dazed by a bright light. In this way, Franz reappropriates the trope of the male-gaze by forcing the viewer into the role of “Peeping Tom”. Her political statement subverts the hetero-centric patriarchal stereotypes of Drag culture and Queerness. And through this subjective role-reversal, regains her autonomy as a dissident identity outside the frame that chooses the parameters through which they can be seen. Simultaneously, Natacha Voliakovsky constructs her frame by arranging the equipment utilized for her performance hung in a horizontal line against the wall: a pair of medical scissors, two latex gloves, a syringe, a bag of cotton balls, a stool resting on its side on the floor. The empty sterile environment once again leaves the audience with an unsettling feeling of discomfort as if out of place. Eventually, Voliakovsky appears dressed modestly in monochrome. She slowly approaches the “operating table” set up and begins prepping for her performance by assembling an injection. Sitting on the stool, Voliakovsky proceeds her durational performance lasting nearly forty minutes by injecting her legs over and over again in micro doses of anti-cellulite solution until the syringe is empty. As an Argentine artist, Voliakovksy’s political narrative pushes the boundaries of the human form in its most viscerally vulnerable essence to expose its strength and resilience. Her praxis challenges what is perceived or understood as “natural” for the human body by engaging with her own physical self as a warred territory. Voliakovsky literally embodies this struggle for dominion by physically and metaphorically bearing the pain and violence of patriarchal political and cultural regimes. She too reappropriates this repression by subjecting herself to a procedure socioculturally understood as a private matter. However, in constructing her own space and assuming the role of both administrator and patient against the public view, Voliakovsky rejects confining herself into a concealed clinic scenario dominated by male practitioners and reclaims the authority to permanently transform her own body according to her terms. In bearing witness, the audience is forced to contemplate yet another taboo ritual and questions the internalization of their own physical and psychological repression. Situating these performances within our contemporary time and space in New York City, these Latin American artists raise critically relevant questions of political body autonomy and gendered violence worldwide. At the peak of Pride celebrations and preparations, Natacha Voliakovsky and Julha Franz carve at the root of the crises driving the urgency for these social movements. Abortion rights and access in the United States continue to be under attack at the same pace that the fight for legalized abortion in Argentina has culminated in protests nationwide. The deaths of over ten transgender women in the United States alone, most recently Layleen Polanco Extravaganza 27; the sentencing of Mariana Gomez (Argentina) to one year in prison for kissing her wife; and Brazil’s highest reported LGBTQ murder rate in the world, reveal the war, violence and repression against marginalized bodies and identities persists. Franz and Voliakovsky juxtapose their subjectivity, insisting we collectively reconsider our own confinement and compliance as both victims and prosecutors of the structures of violence that coerce the erasure of our bodies. They expose themselves as vessels revealing difficult truths and carry a question that seems easy to ask but hard to answer: What do the layers of our own erasure truly conceal?
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NYC’s East Village is "graced" with performance art by prominent Brooklyn performance space9/7/2018 Tonight, one of Brooklyn’s prominent performance art spaces, Grace Exhibition Space initiates their fall programming within the walls of their new home on Avenue C (and 11th St.) This move marks a historic transition for the nonprofit gallery space that has fostered the growth and community of Brooklyn-based performance artists and organizations since 2006. Co-Directors, Jill McDermid and Erik “Hoke” Hokanson continue charging forward with the promotion of and “glorification of performance art.”
The news of a Brooklyn space moving to Manhattan is quite rare, especially for a nonprofit organization focused on performance art. But one Bushwick rent increase demand after another led to a clear need for an address change. McDermid hopes to forge relationships between the Brooklyn performance community and the East Village through regular performance programming paired with exhibitions and workshops. Tonight, Grace at 182 Avenue C features performance work from 5 artists hailing internationally and locally: Martin O'Brien, Miao Jiaxin, Jaguar Mary, Esther Neff and Oya Damla. Location: 182 Avenue C, New York, NY 10009 Performances begin at 6pm. We look forward to this event kick off and hope to see you there! Awilda Rodriguez Lora is a performance choreographer and cultural entrepreneur. Born in Mexico, raised in Puerto Rico, and working in-between North and South America and the Caribbean, Rodríguez Lora's performances traverse multiple geographic histories and realities promoting progressive dialogues regarding hemispheric colonial legacies, and the unstable categories of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Rodríguez Lora has been an invited guest artist at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD), Brooklyn Museum, New York University, the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Dance Center, University of Michigan and Universidad de Puerto Rico, among others.
Rodríguez Lora’s work was recently included in “Comfort Level,” a show at Field Projects Gallery, on view May 3-June 9th, and in “Tool Box” a limited artist’s edition and fundraiser for Agite-Arte, both co-curated by Alissa D. Polan and me, Sarah G. Sharp, and performances at La Mama Theater and the Brooklyn Academy of Music among others. We asked Awilda to create a performance for the “Comfort Level” closing party, La Mujer Maravilla: 4654, which was incredibly moving. I sat down to discuss creating that performance and her creative influences just two days before she performed La Mujer Maravilla: Cuerpa at The Brooklyn Museum, which was part of the Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 exhibit. Boxing with Szilard Gaspar
Zorzini Gallery at Volta Art Fair, NYC, March 1, 2017 By Alexandra Hammond As a steady stream of people breezed through the long corridors of the Volta Art fair at Pier 90, concentration gathered at booth F01, occupied by Zorzini Gallery of Bucharest, Romania. A slender young man, Romanian artist Szilard Gaspar, with the face of a saint from a Spanish Golden Age painting, arrived in the booth, seated himself and began changing his shoes and taping his hands. His preparations were executed with the specificity of a trained athlete. The intimacy of these actions was heightened by the art fair setting, where everyone’s gaze is trained to the external world of images, objects, opportunities for social networking, sales. The spectacle of the person changing from one activity to another, dressing and undressing, took on the importance that Mr. Rogers so aptly demonstrated in his children's show, where the ritual of the daily change of clothes, from outdoor jacket to cardigan, dress shoes to sneakers became a stabilizing routine and a marker of a boundary from one place and one kind of activity to the next. It was not so much a necessity, that the new activity could not be performed or inhabited without the wardrobe change, as a decision to enter a new mode of operation. Maybe it's the warmer weather, maybe it's the temporary escapism but we are really looking forward to New York Armory Week. Several art fairs have upped their performance art programming and some, well, we just can't seem to get any information from... thus is art week. So here it is, our top NY Armory Week 2017 performance art picks. Hope to see you around!
Over the past 6 years, I've witnessed the ebb and flow New York's performance art community. Many performance artists who presented work in 2010 have left the discipline entirely due to high living costs and low (to no) performance honorariums. Fortunately, several performance artists have evolved their practice and successfully developed their careers through exhibitions, grants and awards. Multi-media artist, NYUGEN SMITH (NJ), is one such example and has established himself as a staple within the New York performance community. Smith was the first performance artist to cross my invisible "this-is-a-safe-distance-from-a-messy-performer" boundary. Adorned in a white wig and blue petticoat, Smith gnawed on sugar cane inches away from my face. Cane juice dripped freely while puffs of white baby powder flew around Vaudeville Park (Brooklyn, NY). The layered scent of cane juice and baby powder paired with Smith's unwavering gaze diluted the performer/viewer "stage." This experience changed my approach toward viewing. I'll never forget it! In our latest Artist Feature, Smith discusses intercepting boundaries while exploring the role of performer and viewer as director. Enjoy! - Quinn Dukes QUINN DUKES: Can you talk about your practice as a multimedia artist? Does one medium influence the other? NYUGEN SMITH: For me, working with various media allows for more opportunities to play. As ideas are generated, I go to the medium that I feel will allow me to communicate most effectively at that moment, for that particular project. I often speak about this fluidity in terms of spoken language-sometimes one needs to use another language to get closest to saying what needs to be said. It also comes from the the need to be able to make at any moment. One medium does influence the other in my practice. On a subconscious level, choices and actions are primarily made and cannot be separated from the sum of my experiences. On a conscious level, what is learned from, experienced, through one medium is intentionally utilized during the creative process. I ask myself, for example, how does what I know about lighting for on camera video performance inform lighting choices for live action? What have I learned from collage that can be useful in drawing and performance? QD: Do you often use your sculptural and/or collage objects within your performances? NS: Yes, I often include and use some of my sculptural objects in my performances. I often find that they reveal new meaning when activated in thin this way. QD: You are in the final stages of your MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, how has your work evolved from this experience? NS: So much can be said about the impact of my MFA studies at SAIC on the evolution of my practice. I definitely read a whole lot more. Assigned readings have led me to writers, thinkers, artists and others who have interesting things to say and ask important questions. QD: Who are some of these authors? NS: Authors such as Fred Moten, Malidoma Patrice Somé, André Schwarz-Bart, Robert Farris Thompson, Claudia Rankine, and Walter Benjamin, have been impactful. I read slowly, so teaching full-time in a high school and maintaining an active studio practice often left me with little time to read a lot. Since I began grad school, I slowed down on the amount of objects I have produced. The amount of reading and writing required for my courses naturally shifted me to spending more time with my head in the books than in the studio. The amount of performance work I have done has increased significantly during this period. It was a welcomed transition and I truly enjoyed it. Certain texts caused me to think about my work on other levels and also strengthened my ability to speak about my work within other contexts. My professors, studio mentors and classmates have also been inspirational and influential to my practice through their formal and informal critiques, suggested readings, art practices, and their writings. QD: What led to an increase in performance? NS: Being a part of Social Health Performance Club has played a significant role in increasing the visibility of my Performance work and has subsequently led to more requests and opportunities. During this time of study- being in my head more, has definitely strengthened the way I have developed in this art form. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago nominated me for the 2016 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship and I was one of nine artists to receive this national award. The fellowship will provide me with support to make my transition to working on my art full-time. QD: So, this is why you decided to leave your teaching position? NS: Yes. It was my dream, as with many artists, to be able to rise each day and tend to the business of their art practice. So, to honor this gift, to give it all that it requires of me, to make the most of this opportunity, stepping out of the classroom was necessary. QD: Your performance at Gallery Sensei (NYC) in May 2016, relied heavily on audience participation and audience member as performer. Can you discuss your intentions for participation in this particular work? NS: I'm glad to know that "audience member as performer" was evident. I am interested in developing some ideas where I am not a participant, but the director. The work at Gallery Sensei, was the second work where I experimented with "directing" as performance. The first was a work titled, iambic pentameter, made during an edition of Tif Robinette and Ian Deleón's PULSAR in Brooklyn, NY. That work was developed after reading Fred Moten's Resistance of the Object: Aunt Hester's Scream and reflecting on "(b)etween looking, being looked at, spectacle and spectatorship, enjoyment and being enjoyed..." This Moten text was shared with my by my studio mentor, Steffani Jemison after conversation and review of a previous performance. So, with this Moten text and directing - all swirling in my head, I developed the work presented at PULSAR and Gallery Sensei. My intentions for the participation were manifold. I am interested in what happens when an audience member - who volunteers to participate - is given a task to perform without any verbal or written instructions. I am directing the action involved in the task, however, essentially the volunteer cum performer can essentially take it in another direction if she/he chooses and. This can potentially shift the work dramatically and that becomes part of the permanent record of the piece. It's also about memory. How does the audience participation affect how I remember the work and how it is remembered by the audience? In the beginning of the performance I had them place a rope around themselves in the back room and drew everyone in very close- with me in the center before I blew the conch shell and drank a glass of wine. How did this action of bringing the group together in the beginning so closely affect their willingness to participate and empathize with those who volunteered during the rest of the performance? QD: Your last performance was void of any verbal communication yet incredibly directive. Has this method of guidance ever led to audience misinterpretation? NS: I'm not sure if there was any misinterpretation by the audience. I don't know how to measure this. There have been times when the participant did not understand my direction in the performance and did something other than what I intended for them to do. One thing that I have always stressed with my students is that there is always a way to use whatever it is that doesn't go as planned. Sometimes they can be used immediately and other times, just save them because they can be useful later. So, as these moments occur during the performance, I allow them to inform how the works develop. For example, during the performance at Gallery Sensei, the artist Ayana Evans volunteered to participate. I gave her the task of twirling an umbrella while holding it over her head. I intended to have three volunteers seated on the bench, but when I signaled to her (by licking my finger and drawing an invisible X) to sit on the bench, she stood on it. It immediately reminded me of something else I wanted to experiment with, a choir as part of a performance. So I signaled to the other volunteer to stand on the bench also and I began to conduct the two person choir. It was totally unexpected and was a beautiful transition to the part of the performance that followed. QD: Where does your interest in a performative choir stem from? NS: I just love the way the voice can move the mind, body and spirit. In my life I have spent a significant amount of time in Spiritual Baptist Churches in Trinidad, Catholic and Black and churches of different faiths the U. S. So I have experienced the performative act of using the voice for most of my life. I am interested in what voices working together can produce. QD: Your recent writings are like stream of consciousness word mappings tying together tangents of learned and lived histories. What is your intent with the performance writings? NS: In relation to my writings about my performances, then yes, I do look at these writings as a poetic written extension of the performances. In regards to my writing related to my photographs, social media posts, I see this writing as poetry. This is another way that my Grad program has had an impact on my work. Writing is central to our program. The poetics not only of language but in all that I make as an artist is important to me. I have had the honor and privilege of studying with, learning from, reading and collaborating with some brilliant artists/writers such as Sandrine Schaefer, Cheryl Pope, Julian Gato, Alissa Chanin in the last two years and this has had a huge impact on my writing style. For the majority of visiting artists in my MFA program including Glenn Ligon, Eileen Myles, Yvonne Rainer, Allejandro Sesarco, Lynn Tillman, writing is their medium or included as an important part of their practice. From 1994-2001, I wrote, recorded and performed spoken word poetry and rap music. So even before I devoted myself to the visual arts, writing poetry was a part of me. So much can be said by not saying much at all. When writing creatively, I think about using words sparingly. Language can be used to include and exclude. To open and to close. I think about opening my writing. Leaving room for breathing in what is being said, what is being implied, and what can be derived from the sum of absence and presence in my writing. QD: Do you have performance art mentors? NS: I don't have any performance art mentors per se. However, some people and institutions that have had an impact on my performance work recently are, Grace Exhibition Space (I've learned so much from the extensive list of brilliant artists who have made and continue to make performances here and are part of GES' projects), Hector Canonge, Sandrine Schaefer, Ian Deleón and Tif Robinette, Cheryl Pope, Clifford Owens, yon Tande, Steffani Jemison, Denenge Akpem, and Marilyn Arsem. There are others who I don't know personally and have never had a conversation with, but research their work to learn. QD: What do you think about the contemporary performance art community in Brooklyn versus Chicago? NS: I don't know the performance art community in Chicago. Since I have only spent a relatively short time there, I have not had the opportunity to truly become a part of that community there. There are some wonderful artists there that I know who are making great performance work. I've been in exhibitions with and have begun having conversations about working with performance artists from Chicago in the future. The community in Brooklyn is one that has encouraged and supported my growth as an artist who also works in performance. I have found that the community is thriving, growing and despite lack of critical reviews, limited inclusion in the programming and conversation surrounding performance at major institutions in NYC, the work continues. Thanks to platforms such as Performance is Alive, Incident magazine, PULSAR's Trouble Performing Podcast, Grace Exhibition Space, LiVEART.US (at the Queens Museum), artists who make performances in Brooklyn and surround area have spaces for to make work, have conversation, critical dialog, and build community. QD: What is next for you? Any upcoming exhibitions or performances to note? NS: A couple upcoming projects are confirmed: School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA Thesis exhibition thru July 31st Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor Chicago, IL Yet to be titled Solo exhibition at Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University Tuesday, September 6th – Friday, October 14th 400 S. Orange Ave South Orange NJ. October, Art in Odd Places 2016: RACE. Think High a Collaborative work with Thomas Powers More info to come: http://www.artinoddplaces.org/ Updates can be accessed on my website: http://www.nyugensmith.com/#!exhibits/yxir1 NYUGEN SMITH |
ABOUT nyugen smith | Drawing heavily on his West Indian heritage, Nyugen is committed to raising the consciousness of past and present political struggles through his practice which consists of sculpture, installation, video and performance. He is influenced by the conflation of African cultural practices and the residue of European colonial rule in the region. Responding to the legacy of this particular environment, Nyugen’s work considers imperialist practices of oppression, violence and ideological misnomers. While exposing audiences to concealed narratives that distort reality, he destabilizes constructed frameworks from which this conversation is often held. |
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9TH, 6PM |
CONTRIBUTORS
Ian Deleón
Quinn Dukes
Alexandra Hammond
Luke Mannarino
Polina Riabova
Sarah G. Sharp
Alex Sullivan
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