"NÓMADA EL LABERINTO DEL TORO" is an urban art festival that took place every weekend from the 31st of July to the 21st of August, Maracay, Venezuela. I performed on the second weekend of the event.
Textura de Sombra translates as Texture of Shadow. It consists of three main elements; my body dressed all in black, a scissors f0r cutting and food substances: sugar and yellow corn meal; both are a powdery texture. This piece aimed to make visible something personal and corporeal. I returned to the theme of showing the marked body as I first did in Marked for Life.
Textura de Sombra translates as Texture of Shadow. It consists of three main elements; my body dressed all in black, a scissors f0r cutting and food substances: sugar and yellow corn meal; both are a powdery texture. This piece aimed to make visible something personal and corporeal. I returned to the theme of showing the marked body as I first did in Marked for Life.
However I wanted the cutting to be as far removed from the idea of pain as possible. I wanted it to be more of a symbol, a memory, a line, a way of marking. I did this by making the act itself very hidden, slow and minimalist. I used the sugar and cornmeal the way colored powders are used to make mandalas using colors, line and repetition to create a composition that ended on my body. The lines were imitations of my way of marking myself; straight parallel lines. Through all this repetition I am drawing my lines out of myself and on to other surfaces.
I started the performance on the ground in the center of a design of concentric circles; this made my actions very site specific. I sat in the middle of the hills of cornmeal and sugar. I chose these substances to represent my dual Identity. Sugar historically coming from the sugar industry in Trinidad & Tobago and Corn Meal being the main ingredient for the traditional Venezuelan daily bread, Arepas. I used both substances for their texture and poured them like sand within the lines of the circles I was sitting on. All around myself I poured them to create numerous parallel lines.
Sugar
Corn Meal
When the hills had disappeared in this way I proceeded to cut open my leggings to reveal my naked flesh which similarly shows repeated parallel lines from scars. With sets of staples concealed in my hands I caressed my legs until old wounds reopened and new wounds were made. Once more I recreated lines; in each different way that I draw it, it is a mantra. The cuts bleeding in the same pattern I made on the ground; my blood mixing with the sugar and corn meal.
Photos by Narvis Bracamonte and Morella Cuba
Below is the video footage from the performance. It starts off very shaky but nonetheless I am always grateful for the people I meet willing to help me preserve these moments.
