As an insider/outsider artist, Guillermo Gómez-Peña has had an obsession with rewriting and re-staging so-called “Western Art History” while highlighting colonial legacies of systematic exclusion, demonization and fetishization of women and BIPOC. This performance keynote challenges contemporary art museum practices and calls for an open discussion regarding radical restructuring from within.
"I dream of a world beyond the white avant-garde, way beyond the Western Canon, a supernova of possibilities. I dream of museums and theaters as a network or constellation of spaces that work in close communication to better the field—including wrestling with colonial demons and white supremacist practices."
—Guillermo Gómez-Peña, An Open Letter to the Museums of the Future
Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue and artistic director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978, and since 1995, his three homes have been San Francisco, Mexico City and the "road."
His performance work and 21 books have contributed to the debates on cultural, generational, and gender diversity, border culture and North-South relations. His artwork has been presented at over one thousand venues across the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Russia, South Africa and Australia. A MacArthur Fellow, USA Artists Fellow, and a Bessie, Guggenheim, and American Book Award recipient, he is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and Europe and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT), the Venice Performance Art Week Journal, and emisférica, the publication of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (NYU). Gómez-Peña is currently a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency, and a Senior Fellow in the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.
“My current performance represents the fruit of my life’s work in all its iterations: live performance, lecturing, archiving, literary work, mentoring, community activism, all coming together to address the dangers of the times we live in with its disregard for human life and insidious undermining of democracy.
" At this time in my life I am thinking as much about legacy as I am trying to continually produce socially conscious experimental artwork that is simultaneously plugged into the national debates. I have learned from decades of touring performance material to locations beyond the Border that a call to action - in the form of a work of art - has the power to elicit compassion and inculcate a desire for social justice.
"For me performance art is a form of radical democracy and citizenship which depends on the presence of the audience/community to succeed. I view my approach to creating this hybrid piece as "performing the archives" for multiple contexts: The art world, academia, community and the media. I am particularly interested in connecting with a new generation of audience members who may not have been exposed to the history of my generation, performance art and the Chicano movement.”
Join us for a glimpse into the future of art museums with this visionary. This talk begins at 6 p.m. in the Polk/Wilson Gallery. Everyone is welcome at this free event.
