Isla en Peso (2018)

One-channel, color, sound, duration, loop.

Isla en Peso, 2018, is a site-specific durational performance staging the militant, a pillar that upholds structures of power, as a complacent tool trapped under a system of authority and control. Dressed in a green military uniform, with my head and hands covered in my own blood, I stand and pace back and forth atop a rotating piece of marble in the woods of Vermont.

This piece is part of Pájaro Falling, a series of site-specific performances navigating my entanglements with contact, conflict, and violence. I use a transparent plastic tarp, my own blood, the nude body, a militant uniform, a fence, and movement to engage and recycle ideas of visibility, death, and traps. Investigating Jose Esteban Muñoz’s theory of “disidentification,” that positions queer world making on, with, and against dominant ideology, I disidentify with the militant and the conditions of being queer and Cuban. Contending what and who has the implied right to camouflage and concealment to disarticulate colonial discourses of authority. As I fail and fall within Cubanidad, these performances point to the intersection of my identity and the violence that results from misalignment with the cultural and ideological mainstream.