THEATRE ARCHIVE.
Performance takes subject matter and embodies it. Performance as a human rights discourse- completely personalizes that which is typically prohibited from speech. Performance, like activism is physicality, it is often collective, as it requires a performer and an audience. Performance art- especially that which is done in public, interrupts business as usual, it forces people to look. Take a moment to feel something, whether that something be repulsion, or awe, or solidarity it forces a conversation through interpretable and imaginary embodiments within a moment.
CHILE.
Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis was a critical performance art collective that formed during Pinochet's dictatorship, and continued into the democratization period thereafter. The collective, consisting of two queer men, created work that spoke out about human rights abuses in solidarity with resistance movements. In 1988 Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis rode together naked, horseback, onto the grounds of the University of Chile’s School of Art. The action represented a taking back of the university for minority students— for queer students. The work eroticized and made fun of the authority figure, the militant, and the conquistador riding horseback, it made physically present a critical art on the grounds of the university. This action was significantly important through its interconnection of art, theatre, and the university- three forces perceived as threats to dictatorships throughout Latin America.
THE AMAZON.
Uýra Sodoma is a drag queen and performance artist from the Brazilian Amazon. Uýra uses found and natural materials for her drag persona and educational performances. As a biologist, she takes her knowledge of the natural world and uses art as an outlet by which to preserve it through educational performances. “I understood that life is not only fauna and flora,” she explains. “Biodiversity also encompasses human life, especially LGBT people, women, black people, minorities and indigenous people. This is the real meaning of the word ‘life’.”"
