Central, the first Central American and Caribbean performance festival, will take place during the months of September, October and November 2024 at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade, located in the Lower East Side, in Manhattan, New York. In this festival, attendees will be able to see twenty performances and works by artists who work from immateriality and the creation of ephemeral experiences from the body, a true feast for the senses exploring themes such as violence, migration, diaspora, the abuse of power, identity and other problems intrinsic to the human being. Curated by the Mexican artist Pancho Lopez, this festival seeks to build a bridge between the Central American region, some Caribbean islands and one of the most important global stages in the world in terms of art and culture: New York City.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
PANCHO LOPEZ
Pancho López (born June 3, 1972 in Mexico City) is a performance artist interested in the everyday life and feelings of human nature, and how it connects with artistic expressions. He studied Communication
Sciences at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of UNAM in Mexico. Founder and current Director of the Extra! International Performance Art Festival. For 11 years he was head of the Department of Performance and Contemporary Art of the Museo Universitario del Chopo. Coordinated the International Meeting of Performagia Performance from 2003 to 2009 and published in coordination with UNAM 7 catalogs of the meeting in 2011.
Pancho Lopez’s most important series of performance are “Picnic Formal”, presented since 1997 until 2007 in Mexico, United States and Canada; “Sal de Mesa”, presented in Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic; and “Ira (Rabia Contenida), made in Mexico, China, Canada and Poland. He was a journalist for 5 years in the Crónica de Hoy newspaper (Culture section). He worked as coordinator of cultural projects in 2012-2013 for the UNAM Foundation. López also hosts cultural radio shows like De La A a La Jota on UC Radio, and Perforadio.
Recently, he received grants from the Multimedia Center and the Jumex Foundation to investigate video performance in Latin-America.
Sitio: http://www.p3rform4nc3.com