Lorene Bouboushian, Tara Morhua, Mág Ne Tá & Survivor Guilt, Alex Chellet
A full evening of performance artists from many parts of the world
LORENE BOUBOUSHIAN [NYC]
In my creative practice, I synthesize movement and voice improvisation and audience interaction in order to challenge and expand the notion of improvisation. My collaborative and solo works are informed by a cross-section of aesthetic ideas and values in dance, music, and performance art.
Approaching each situation with true spontaneity, I seek to throw the milieu of a given performance situation into relief through humor, social commentary, and vulnerability. By wielding social content through humor, I challenge dominant social positionings in a given setting. I oscillate between charm and desolation, as a means of diving into every interstitital tension present. Laughter is a central generative element of the work; it paves the way toward more difficult revelations. It provides a connective tissue between emotionally jarring juxtapositions of text, movement, and interaction.
I consider improvisation a strategy for scrutiny and infiltration. I ask my audiences to look deeply at themselves, and I put my body in difficult relationships to theirs. Rather than shy away from my body as something that is overrepresented, I take it to its limits both as and beyond what it looks like.
The most important way I have found to foment real vulnerability is by processing my family history through my voice and movement. My grandfather was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, and my father, who grew up in Beirut, emigrated to the US during the Lebanese civil war. I grew up working-class, in the Bible Belt of rural Texas. my father was a brown guy with an accent who threw papers, and my mother was a nice white lady with her artistic, white kids trying to keep up with the joneses. So, My family occupied a liminal space between white, Christian, upstanding citizens, and drug-dealing, war-torn, remittance-sending immigrants.
This history complicates my relationship to how I should perform. So, I deal with performance as the arena wherein I contend with the different selves and the conflicting worlds I inhabit.
TARA MORHUA [NORWAY] Cod, life & love
The artist duo Tara Morhua, AKA Marita Isobel Solberg & Trond Ansten mix performance art, installation, photo and video. In their alchemical processes, they explore treasures from the north, and in the project "Cod, life & love" it is their old friend from the sea that is the main character. World famous under the name of Bacalao, the cod gave the basis for settlement along the coast of Northern Norway, and during the Middle Ages became the largest export item from Norway.
www.maritaisobelsolberg.virb.com
image of Tara Morhua by Martin Eilertsen
ALEX CHELLET [MEXICO]
My name is Alejandro Chellet, I am a multidisciplinary artist and social practitioner in cultural and permacultural networks. I was born in Mexico City raised in a family of artists and performers. I currently live between Upstate NY where I practice permaculture, NYC and CDMX where I am also a cultural producer providing exhibition space for other artists. My artwork functions in close relation with the audience primarily making use of waste, public space, architecture and performance: addressing the misplaced core principles of coexistence, the loss of connection with Nature cycles, and the political and environmental context of urban societies.
MÁG NE TÁ [NYC]
MÁG NE TÁ: I use performance, installation, and digital media to investigate the intersections between emotion, identity, and history in the context of the now. Context is a state characterized by proximity and societal discourse, and now, specifically, is penetrated by Internet co-dependence, accelerated globalization, and mass over-production. As I work to understand how individual relationships currently operate spatially and temporally, I rely on physical forms as well as the immaterial. For example, mixing together clay and manufactured goods, or creating confrontational performances within the light of digital forms. Embracing a post-medium process enables me to create mystical elevation in an age of physical and psychological artifice. I refer to a range of sources--social media networks, mass media outputs, and real-life oral testimony--to challenge how contemporary global history is absorbed on a personal and experiential level.
in collaboration with:
SURVIVOR GUILT [NYC] amanda-lee.net
GEB BERRY [NYC]
DANNY GONZALEZ [NYC]
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GRACE:
Grace, n. - simple elegance or refinement of movement
Grace Period - an extended period granted as a special favor
The Three Graces (Greek Mythology) - charm, grace, and beauty
Opened in 2006, Grace Exhibition Space is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging works by the current generation of international performance artists whether emerging, mid-career or established. Our events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the boundary between artist and viewer. This is how performance art is meant to be experienced and our mission is the glorification of performance art.
Grace Exhibition Space presents over 30 curated live performance art exhibitions each year, showcasing new work by more than 400 performance artists from across the United States and the world since 2006.
Grace Exhibition Space for International Performance Art Space IRS tax-exempt 501(c)3 status in 2015.
Grace Exhibition Space follows the We Have a Voice Collectives Code of Conduct to Promote Safe(r) Workplaces in the Performing Arts For more information and resources, visit: www.wehavevoice.org