ActionHere/BeingThere

Performance is Alive is pleased to present ActionHere/BeingThere - a performance art-based video exhibition curated on the occasion of the inaugural Denver Month of Video (.MOV). ActionHere/BeingThere presents an exciting range of performance-based practices from international artists, providing .MOV viewers an opportunity to experience the boundlessness of performance.

Seminal live art tropes such as endurance, repetition, and the political body are boldly displayed throughout the selected works. Performance, as an act of transference is explored by Zaire Kaczmarski’s ritualistic performance, Remember. While repetition serves as anchor points for Caida Libre (Free Fall) by Momo Magallon and Chinasa Vivian Ezugha’s glossolalic audio piece entitled Tongues.

Durational actions are enacted by Nicola Fornoni in the site-specific video Overshoot Day, filmed within a marble quarry. Riccardo Matlakas’ public performance, Melting Borders, Mexico / USA border presents an excerpt from a project that has spanned multiple iterations across 4 countries.

Actions birthed from an exploration of intersectionality and the political are prominent within works by Zachary Fabri, Arantxa Araujo, and Kiyo Guitierrez. Fabri’s piece, Mourning Stutter, is informed by successive murders of African Americans by police officers. Araujo’s performance for camera punctuates the politics of migration and Gutiérrez organized a fierce public performance on the ‘Roundabout of the Disappeared in the Mexico feminicida.

In the making and presentation of performance art, performers must be actively engaged in their individual “beingness” while inspiring the viewer to grow aware of their presence. This exhibition tests the boundaries of self and the limitations of live actions presented on screen.

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Curator:‍

Quinn Dukes (USA): Quinn Dukes is a multimedia performance artist, activist, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Her performance work addresses social injustice, sensorial connection, and ritual.

IG: @quinndukes | @performanceisalive

Website: www.quinndukes.com

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Artists:

Arantxa Araujo (Mexico City, MEX): Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican trans-disciplinary artist with a background in neuroscience challenging inequities by creating radical awareness. Araujo's work addresses systemic oppression as reflected in gender violence, the politics of migration, and inequities among marginalized folks. Her works are feminist, meditative, and rooted in bio-behavioral research and technology.

IG: @ArantxaAraujo

Website: www.arantxaaraujo.com

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‍Chinasa Vivian Ezugha (Nigeria/UK): Chinasa Vivian Ezugha is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter. Her interdisciplinary practice spans live art, film, and drawing, and explores her identity as a Black woman living in England. Ezugha is motivated to create by her interest in history and how it is performed in the mundanity of everyday living. Performance. Ezugha believes, is an embodiment of past, present and future experiences

Website: https://vcezugha.wixsite.com/work-in-progress

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Zachary Fabri (USA): Zachary Fabri is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist engaged in lens-based media and public space. He works across video, drawing, and installation, often complicating the boundaries of studio research and performance.

Website: www.zacharyfabri.com

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Nicola Fornoni (Italy): Nicola’s performances talk about the body's themes, relevant to the artist's life and social issues. He challenges himself, using performance art as a natural remedy and source of freedom. Nicola uses performances and video art as languages that communicate the expression of his actions. He intends to change society, change peoples’ minds, and show the force of the body without remorse.

FB: www.facebook.com/fornoni.nicola

Website: www.nicolafornoni.com

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Kiyo Gutiérrez (Guadalajara, MEX): Kiyo Gutiérrez is a Mexican performance artist based in Guadalajara. She studied history because she wanted to understand where she was standing, but she couldn’t find any answers in heteropatriarchal narratives. Then she discovered her path was in the body and it's potential as a tool of resistance. She draws on multiple mediums including video, photography, dance, poetry, sculpture and sound. Ecofeminist, provocative, earthy, and political, her performance pieces question established order and power, and explore the ties between female oppression and the destructive exploitation of Planet Earth.

Website: www.kiyogutierrez.com

IG: @kiyogutierrez

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Zaire Kaczmarski (Venezuela/USA): Born and raised in Venezuela, Zaire Kaczmarski is an interdisciplinary artist whose work posits the human body as a site of awareness of both the self and our collective oneness. While solo and collaborative performances use ritualistic and meditative practices as a vehicle for the exploration of memory and identity, actions like gazing, walking, dancing, or intertwining become tools to negotiate with the Other and set the stage for public exchange. Like the human body itself, she understands her practice to be in a constant state of flux and discovery.

IG: @zaireartlab

Website: www.zaireartlab.com

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Momo Magallon (Panama City, PAN): Momo Magallon is a multidisciplinary artist whose main mediums are painting and performance. Magallon's work investigates mundane narratives, her experience as a young woman, belongingness, space, and place connecting viewer and the material. Her gestural technique transcends traditional painting canons focusing on paint as an object and a material that holds as much value as the image being depicted.

IG:@momomagallon

Website: www.momomagallon.com

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Riccardo Matlakas (UK): Riccardo Matlakas is best known for his multi-talented capacity in different art forms including performance art, painting, sculpture and installation. Riccardo values the context he works in as the main inspiration for his work, finding a common ground with each culture he connects with. The artist creates cathartic actions and performances in the fore-front of current political, environmental and spiritual concerns by digging for the essence of humanity beyond race and custom. The artist often collects relics from his performances which later become objects of memory and contemplation.

IG: @riccardo_matlakas

Website: https://matlakas.co.uk/

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‍Public hours:

Thursdays through Sundays, 12:00pm – 6:00pm, June 30th – July 30th, 2023

Curator Talk and Reception: July 21st, 6:00pm  – 9:00pm

Understudy is free-to-visit and open to all. We are located at the Colorado Convention Center / Theatre District light rail stop near 14th and Stout. Look for the Shantell Martin art bench.