Tickets
CENTRAL Performance Festival - September, October, November 2024 - presented at Grace Exhibition Space, a space for creative experimentation that has been dedicated to performance for more than a decade. 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; 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.
PERFORMANCES BY:
QUINTIN RIVERA TORO (PUERTO RICO)
Quintín Rivera Toro was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, 1978. He holds an MFA from RISD and a Ph.D. from the Polythecnic University of Valencia. As a conceptual artist living in a colonial country, his artistic pursuits investigate forms of social protestation and gender inequality. In the past year he participated at the Mass MoCA studio program and performed at the Frost Art Museum in Florida. Since 2014 He teaches at the Fine Arts Department at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. His first book of critical essays is scheduled to come out this year with La Criba Editorial.
ALEXIA MIRANDA (EL SALVADOR)
Alexia Miranda is a visual artist and multidisciplinary manager. She studied Humanities, Visual Arts, Transpersonal Psychology, Pedagogy and Contemporary Dance. Her work explores the limits and links of human relationships through body exploration and investigation, performance, psycho-body language, creative pedagogy with children, vulnerable communities and college students. She is the founder of Catapulta Multidisciplinary Cultural Platform, she was the creator of the First National Call for Action Art El Salvador 2009. Her work has been exhibited in Central, North and South America, Europe and the Caribbean. With the project “Collective Fabric” she represented the country at the 13th Havana Biennial. In July 2023, she presented the retrospective of twenty years of her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of Costa Rica and, in 2024, at the Museum of Conteporary Art Queretaro, México.
REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO (GUATEMALA)
Regina lives and works in Guatemala, using her own context to explore and denounce the ethical implications of social violence and injustices related to racial and gender discrimination, as well as human rights abuses stemming from endemic inequalities in power relationships in contemporary societies. She received the Golden Lion award for Best Young Artist at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, and, in 2011, the Prince Claus Award. She participated in the 49, 53 and 54 Venice Biennales, Documenta 14 in Athens and Kasset in the 9th Cuenca International Biennial, the Shanghai Biennial, the Pontevedra Biennial, The 17th Sydney Biennale, the 2nd Moscow Biennale, the 1st Auckland Triennale, the Venice-Istanbul Exhibition, the 1st Canary Islands Art and Architecture Biennale, the 4th Valencia Biennale, the 3rd Albanian Biennale, the 2nd Biennial of Prague and the 3rd Biennial of Lima.
MAURICIO ESQUIVEL (EL SALVADOR)
Mauricio Esquivel graduated with honors in the career of Visual Arts and Design from the National University in El Salvador where he was a teacher for two years. He has resided in Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, London, and the United States, Mauricio currently lives and works in New York. Co- founder of Virgin Studio, and a member of the curatorial group The Fire Theory based in Colombia, El Salvador and New York. He has participated in the talks “Central Themes” (Temas Centrales) coordinated by TEOR/éTica Foundation (2012) and in “The Day We Became Contemporary” (2014) coordinated by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC), both institutions based in San Jose, Costa Rica.
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