This performance will last two hours, with visitors invited to register for 15-minute slots, and conclude with a small reception (all welcome). Due to limited space and anticipated interest, please pre-register here (via SignUpGenius--no account required).
**Some drop-in spots may be available, but are not guaranteed. The Mead's galleries will be open, and visitors are welcome to spend time with all of the exhibitions on view throughout.
The Mead Art Museum is excited to host nibia pastrana santiago for a very special performance connected to her artwork in the Spring 2024 exhibition Trópico es Político: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime, curated by Marina Reyes Franco (Curator, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico).
This "choreographic event" will draw on the artist's on-going improvisational practice, which is rooted in contemporary dance and is repurposed to create events that present the audience with a series of actions, or lack of, as performance. Considering the tropics as a watery space for resistance, pleasure and flow, pastrana santiago pursues a submarine future, both metaphorical and urgent, in light of the rapid acceleration of climate change and the tourist economy—demanding visionary alternatives for the tropics.
The artist will perform continuously from 5pm to 7pm. Audience members may each sign up for 15-minute time slots, and all are welcome to attend a short reception with the artist from 7-7:45 PM. Visitors can browse the on-view exhibitions until the galleries close at 7:30 PM, with the museum closing entirely at 8pm.
This visit is co-sponsored by the Arts at Amherst Initiative, and the Departments of Theater and Dance and Spanish. Photo for promo image by Francisco González.
Based in San Juan and trained in dance and improvisation, nibia pastrana santiago develops site-specific “choreographic events” to experiment with time, fiction and notions of territory. Along with dance scholar Susan Homar, nibia is co-editor of the book Habitar lo imposible: Danza y experimentación en Puerto Rico (2023) published by Editorial Beta-Local and the English edition published by University of Michigan Press Inhabiting the Impossible: Dance and Experimentation in Puerto Rico (2023). In 2022, the exhibition Choreopolitics: Brendan Fernandes & nibia pastrana santiago was presented at MASS MoCa. nibia’s work has been commissioned by de Appel (2020) and the Whitney Biennial (2019), and supported by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and the Puerto Rican Arts Initiative Fellowship (2020-2023). She worked as co-director at Beta-Local in San Juan, and for a period of five years served as the Dance Program Academic Coordinator at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, Santurce.
"Trópico es Político: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime" considers notions of natural & fiscal paradise through the work of artists living in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Curated by Marina Reyes Franco, the exhibition explores artists’ responses to the "visitor economy regime” that is defined by the confluence of tourism and finance in the region. Across mediums, artists center fiscal and cultural exchange, bodies, and territories as part of a critical investigation of how the tropical is political. It will be on view at the Mead until May 5, 2024.
This exhibition was initiated as a collaboration between Americas Society and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. This exhibition has been possible thanks to support from Teiger Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. Prior installations of this exhibition were shown at Americas Society, New York (September 7 - December 22, 2022) + Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (San Juan, February 13 - July 30, 2023).