Photo: Pocha Nostra
Lauded as a "border artist extraordinaire" Gómez-Peña, uses acid Chicano humor, hybrid literary genres, multilingualism, and activist theory as subversive strategies.
In partnership with El Centro Su Teatro, the Museo de las Américas presented internationally renowned performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña this week as part of the Bienniel of the Américas program.
In his new solo-performance, post-Mexican writer and performance artist Gómez-Peña deals with the end of the Bush era and articulates the formidable challenges facing Obama. He also denounces the anti-immigration hysteria and assaults the demonized construction of the US/Mexican border—a literal and symbolic zone lined with Minute Men, rising nativism, three-ply fences, globalization, and transnational identities.
Recently Gómez-Peña summarized his form of artistry. “I’m first a writer and then a performance artist. Whatever I can translate into live images, I don’t write about; and whatever I can’t translate into life images, I write about. There are two parallel processes and they are very complementary. My literature is much more personal and I don’t have to be countable to anyone. It is the ultimate personal cry for freedom.
My performance work is more countable, since I have chosen, as a citizen diplomat, to utilize my performance art as a form of radical diplomacy and radical democracy,” he stated in a recent interview with Body Pixel. “So, in my performance art, everything I do is in consensus with my collaborators. It’s a different kind of practice.”
Referring to the topic of democracy, the artist elaborated on his life experiences on the subject and it’s revelations through art.
“I have never been to a truly democratic society. I think that certain societies maybe can be slightly more democratic then the other, but I really believe that performance art is a clumsy, imperfect and somewhat functional radical democracy. Because, all structures in performance art are horizontal and the authority is there to be questioned.
“It is polyvocal and there is a consensus, decision making.
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