Katia Tirado: Parody Paradise

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Sunday, January 14, 6pm

Katia Tirado: Parody Paradise

In Parody Paradise, Katia Tirado uses the idea of the Roman coliseum to subvert an iconic architecture in which tragedy is consumed, desire is delocalized, and our predatory nature is controlled and administered by the power of necropolitics. Using images of “nichos púbicos,” she has built an “architecture of the flesh” where these relationships are reversed. The performance involves a “toro mecánico,” or mechanical bull – a familiar amusement at bars family parties, particularly along both sides of the US/Mexico border – onto which the artist places sex toys, while an original soundtrack plays testimonies of people and organizations that are looking for missing persons in Mexico. After approximately 20 minutes, once this action is completed, those present are invited to participate. The total duration of the performance is open and depends on the participation of the audience.

Parody Paradise extends from Katia Tirado’s Exhivilización/Las perras en celo (the bitch is in heat), a performance from the 1990s. The work presents an opportunity to focus on and expand the “nichos púbicos,” an under-represented element of Exhivilicación, on an unprecedented scale in a piece that bridges past and future. Subverting lucha libre’s customary machismo, Exhivilización/Las perras en cello involved two punked-out luchadoras on all fours connected by a series of chords and tubing that forced them to move in the same direction. The goal was to arrive at each of the large phalluses erected in the four corners of the wrestling ring in which the performance took place, and ignite them – setting off fireworks representing luminous orgasms, at which point a street singer was placed onto the backs of the still-kneeling performers and belted popular, melodramatic ballads. The reward of Exhivili-cación’s successful climax points to the violence and struggle beneath; quite literally, the romantic fixation on normative pleasures frames the body as the point at which to develop critique. In addition to contemporary references such as punk and lucha libre, Exhivilicación contains notable pre-Hispanic references, including the deity Coatlicue, the two-headed Nahuatl goddess who embodies birth and death, life and war, and moon and stars.

More info here.

Programs/ProgramasArmory CenterAugust 20, 2020performance artist, performance, Parody Paradise, Katia Tirado, Tirado, Armory Center for the Arts, Armory, Below the UndergroundComment