Jorge A. Vargas 2023 Mellon Fellow

Portrait

Jorge A. Vargas is stage director, co-founder, and artistic director of Teatro Línea de Sombra. He studied at the École du Mime Corporel in Paris and has directed more than 50 stage plays. 

Since 2009 his projects have been oriented towards a theater of research and critical realism of a collaborative and transversal nature. In conjunction with his collective theater laboratory, over the course of 20 years he has developed a visual and corporal research that has generated plays such as Galería de Moribundos, La oscura raíz, La mirada sorprendida, El Síndrome de Ulises, La Forma que se despliega, and Amarillo.

In 2012 he created the large-format show Article 13, an "inhabited installation" in collaboration with the French company Carabosse. Similarly, he also produced the in situ installation El Puro Lugar with ORTEUV, a commission of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; which resulted in the show Filo de caballos. He also produced Danzantes del Alba, a performance piece and, simultaneously, an audiovisual documentary work, created during the pandemic using ethnographic methods. The most recent piece he created was the activated installation Zona Clausurada, which premiered at the Museo del Chopo and is currently part of the Memorial 68 at the Centro de Cultura Tlatelolco.  

His activities as a creator have been linked to his teaching practice. He has given workshops, seminars, and other courses. His productions have participated in festivals and in the programming of some of the most important theaters in Europe, Asia, and America. Vargas has received, on two occasions, the award for Best "Research" Theater (Teatro de Búsqueda) Director and is a member of the National System of Art Creators.

During his residency, he will finalize the curation of the Teatro Línea de Sombra Collection in the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL), and will participate in the presentation of Danzantes del Alba at NYU Skirball and the symposium “Stages in Movement: Teatro Línea de Sombra on the Migrant Trail".

Land Acknowledgement

The Hemispheric Institute at New York University acknowledges with respect the Lenape nation, whose traditional homelands NYU now occupies. We recognize the longstanding significance of these territories for Lenape nations past and present. We acknowledge that we work in a city with the largest urban Native population in the United States. Even as we work to increase the historical awareness of Indigenous exclusion and erasure, we acknowledge the effect of that legacy in educational institutions, at NYU, and across the hemisphere. We are committed to work revealing Indigenous history and life-worlds and to the inclusion of Indigenous voices and participation, in allyship with Indigenous makers and communities across the Americas.

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The Hemispheric Institute gathers artists, scholars, writers, learners, and activists from across the Americas. We focus on social justice and research politically engaged culture and performance. We share this work in digital archives and amplify it through dialogues and public scholarship, residencies, publications, and gatherings. Our dynamic, multilingual network traverses disciplines and borders and is grounded in the fundamental belief that artistic practice and critical reflection can spark lasting cultural change.

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