Project
Mourning Stage (Performance)
Mourning Stage is a live performance by Carlos Motta and Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau with sound design by Isabel Gonzalez Toro, commissioned for Gathering 3 of the Berlin Biennale. The work references 41 drawings from Motta's We The Enemy series, based on representations of the devil drawn from art history: historical paintings that portray Satan in hell, drawings, illustrations, and sculptures that represent the devil embodied. Each figure defies normative moral standards of beauty, respectability, and behavior. Among this army of demons, there are feminized characters who suggest sexual perversion – as typified by the Catholic imagination. Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau interprets and responds to the drawings on stage using her body and exaggerated facial expressions during a ritualistic performance where the "colonized body"—due to its sexual or gender expressions— is mourned.
The performance was presented in the context of The Power of Mourning: Decolonial Struggles and Queer Bodies at ExRotaprint on 10/29/2020 together with a live performance by Bartolina Xixa and a prerecorded presentation by Naomi Rincón Gallardo, moderated by Agustín Pérez Rubio.
