Performance
Oklahomo
Chicago, United States
2019
I take my shoelaces of my shoes and leave them on a table. I invite people to throw dices to sort a piece of my clothing one by one. After I remain naked, I take three pieces of lamb and guild them with golden leaf. I take three 9 inches long nails and nail them to three pieces of wood. I spill wine. I ask a volunteer from the audience to help me tie the pieces to my head and my right hand with my shoelaces. I adopt the Pantocrator’s pose and a Gregorian Chant, singing the Agnus Dei, starts to play.
In this performance, I sought to address the ambivalence of Catholic ethos in Latin American culture. Being the descendants of both the colonizer and the colonized, Latin Americans deal with an identity crisis in which, regardless of the rejection or belonging or embrace to the Western values inherited from our history, they are invariably a part of who we are. In Agnus Dei, I attempted to embody this contradiction, by resorting to power and violent gestures, and turning them into sublime images and moments.