Acknowledgement

The history and struggles of Afro-diasporic communities in Mexico have been ignored and erased from the country’s official history. This performance calls attention to the Mexican state’s ongoing refusal to recognize the status of Black communities, many of whom have lived in relative isolation along the Pacific coast of Oaxaca since their ancestors were taken from Africa as slaves in the 16th century.

Biography

Carlos Martiel (born 1989, Havana, Cuba) lives and works in New York and Havana. He graduated in 2009 from the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in Havana. Between the years 2008-2010, he studied in the Cátedra Arte de Conducta, directed by artist Tania Bruguera. Martiel’s works have been included in the 14th Sharjah Biennial, UAE; 14th Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador; 57th Venice Biennale, Italy; Casablanca Biennale, Morocco; Biennial La Otra, Colombia; Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom; Pontevedra Biennial, Spain; and the Havana Biennial, Cuba.

Subtle Strangeness

This performative ritual takes place in a fountain-reflecting pool outside of the MUAC in the Centro Cultural Universitario. In an emotional encounter of affective remembering, the artist will use her voice and skin around water to move closer to the people around her.

Biography

Lia Garcia (La Novia Sirena) was born in Mexico City, where she currently lives. She is a feminist apprentice, pedagogue, and performance artist. Her artistic projects have focused on weaving affective bridges between her own trans* experience and Mexico’s social context. She has performed by occupying public space in multiple routes and wanderings.

MADE IN MEXICO

This is a tour through Mexico’s history from Astrid’s point of view: humorous, irreverent, but also well-documented. Carried by slaves, Astrid takes us from the ancient Mexico of Tenochtitlan to the present, doing justice to the memory of women forgotten by history, and using laughter as a powerful weapon of optimism.

Biography

Astrid Hadad is an actress, director, and singer who has developed her own style of cabaret, known as “Heavy Nopal.” She performs popular repertoires, adding texts and songs that she composes and performs, and using costumes she designs for visual effect (with as many as 13 costume changes in a single show). She has presented her performances across the globe.

Empathy 5.1, Site-Specific Technoshamanic Ritual

This ritual is an offering, a gesture, banquet, caucus, a form of divine love, an autoallusive meditation, a cosmic choreography, a coral embrace, a way of gratitude, and a connection between what is above and below, inside and out. We become one and connect to the spaces that surround us.

Biography

Bioescénica is a transdisciplinary company based in Mexico City and Buenos Aires that develops and produces stage proposals combining art, science, and technology. Our hybrid, transdisciplinary work merges live, corporal, visual arts, and performing arts, using site-specific and/or interactive installations.

I'm (not) afraid of so much reality

A queer militant dressed in white and blue (the colors of Nicaraguan nationalism) will release ants in front of the Nicaraguan Embassy in Mexico City. This second performance proposes a critical cochón/queer approach to understanding the kind of uprising and revolution being constructed in the process of liberation underway in contemporary Nicaraguan society.

Biography

Elyla Sinvergüenza (Fredman Barahona) is a performance artist and activist from Nicaragua. Their work often blends video performance, installations, photo performance, relational art, and workshops that explore crossings between theater, performance, and activism. Elyla uses drag as a weapon for political action aimed at social change and collective healing.

The Shakespearean Tour (Juliet)

The Shakespearean Tour is a cabaret show that combines female shakespearean characters and pop culture (where they should belong), as well as the actor's desire to make peace with their inner child. It works like a three-course meal: pick a menu item and choose the three out of six female characters you'd like to see tonight. 

Biography

Mariano Ruiz identifies as an actor and Chingona cabaret artist with over six years of experience performing cabaret and ten years of experience in theater. With The Shakespearean Tour, Ruiz opens up the possibility of exploring identity on stage and creating dialogues with the audience. 

A Woman’s Touch

Very wet burlesque performance where a 1950 housewife transforms her house cleaning routine into something really pleasurable.

Biography

Erica Islas (Mexico City) is an actor and cabaret and burlesque performer with a degree in Dramatic Literature and Theatre from UNAM. She specializes in cabaret performance, and has worked with the cabaret company Las Reinas Chulas. She is the founder of Parafernalia Teatro and currently performs in burlesque shows as Queen Bitch.

The Two Fridas

Biography

Las Pussy Queers is a collective made up of Irakere Lima (Actress) and Larissa Polaco (Producer). In 2016, they decided to unite their acting and production skills to get naked in body and soul. They have presented their work at the Festival Internacional de Cabaret in the editions XIV, XV, XVI and also in the first edition of the festival Tiempo de Mujeres 2019 in 2019.

You can either have fear and run or have fear and rise

Through movement, poetry, and prose, we explore place and belonging. Questioning...
Where do I belong?
Where do I come from?
Notions of family, spirituality.

Biographies

Vaimoana Niumeitolu is an artist and educator. She was born in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, and lives in NYC. She is the founder of Mahina Movement, an all-woman music poetry trio that has performed on over 700 stages. She has directed over 20 educational theater productions with communities.

Julia Lopez, poet and theater artist, has performed and read her original works at venues throughout the United States, Mexico City, Cuba, and Madrid. Her latest play, Graciela, is dedicated to her mother's experience and triumph over depression.

You had to be here

A short cabaret turn of queer revelry.

Biography

Jess Dobkin is a Toronto-based artist, curator, community activist, and teacher. She creates and produces intimate solo theatre performances, large-scale public happenings, socially engaged interventions and performance art workshops and lectures.