Violeta Luna

San Francisco, CA

Violeta Luna’s work explores the relationship between theatre, performance art and community engagement. Working within a multidimensional space that allows for the crossing of aesthetic and conceptual borders, Luna uses her body as a territory to question and comment on social and political phenomena. Born in Mexico City, Luna obtained her graduate degree in Acting from the Centro Universitario de Teatro (UNAM,) and La Casa del Teatro. She has performed and taught workshops extensively throughout Latin America and Europe, as well as in Rwanda, Egypt, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and USA. While primarily working as a solo performer, she is also an associate artist of the San Francisco-based performance collectives La Pocha Nostra and Secos & Mojados. She is a Creative Capital and National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Fellow, and a member of The Magdalena Project: International Network of Women in Contemporary Theatre. Significant works include: Requiem for a Lost Land, Frida, NK603: Action for Performer and e-Maiz, Apuntes sobre la Frontera and a series of collaborations with La Pocha Nostra.


Member of:

Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance.

BORDER TRIP[tych] / TRIP[tico] de la frontera


Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance.

More

Violeta Luna

Artist Bio

David Molina

Artist Bio

Roberto Gutierrez Varea

Artist Bio

Victor Cartagena

Artist Bio

Antigone Trimis

Artist Bio

BORDER TRIP[tych] / TRIP[tico] de la frontera is a three-part collaborative performance art project about an immigrant’s journey from El Salvador to the United States. Incorporating music, text, live performance and prerecorded video, the collaborators are creating each section of the work as a standalone performance, then weaving the three together for a final presentation. Collectively the project encompasses the literal and metaphoric journey faced by an immigrant, from departure to arrival at her new country of residence.

The first section, Buried in the Body of Remembrance / Enterrada en el cuerpo del recuerdo, was presented in 2010 in Argentina and Los Angeles. The second performance panel, A Body Parted: Shrapnel of Present Time / Esquirlas de tiempo presente, presents a ritual/visual narrative focused on a migrant’s journey as she leaves her home in Latin America and arrives in the U.S. searching for a better life. Continuing the work that began with the first panel, this second installment follows the difficult path of the woman as she migrates north, asking the audience to rethink prevalent stereotypical images of immigrants in our society.


Discipline
Performance Art
Award Year
2009
Status

Completed

noname-1110x735

Secos y Mojados

San Francisco, CA

Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance. Spanish for “the dry ones and wet ones,” their name is inspired by the effect that clandestine border crossings, through deserts, rivers and sea, have on the body of the migrant, but are interested in “border crossings” of any kind, ultimately relating to the interconnectedness of identities and places. Secos’ artists embark on the practice of performance grounded on their experiences in theater, music, and performance art, moved by the realization that all creative disciplines are unique and also share common principles, and set out to research the connections that exist between them, and the social reality where they, and us, live and resonate. Their work aims to develop a language for a more nuanced expression of the place that “the migrant” occupies in an inclusive social imaginary.


Individual Bios

Antigone Trimis

David Molina

Violeta Luna

Roberto Gutierrez Varea

Victor Cartagena

David Molina

San Francisco, CA

David Molina is a composer, musician, sound designer and engineer who has worked in theatre, performance art, film, video, radio, dance and multimedia productions for 17 years. During that time, he has worked on numerous pieces with fellow Secos & Mojados artists Varea, Luna and Cartagena individually. Recent credits include his PBS & NIOT documentary Light In The Darkness; a 16-channel soundscape titled Utopia/Nightmare: The American Dream; The Magic Twins at El Teatro Campesino; Lost And Found, a live soundtrack to the films of Anna Geyer; Homage to Musee Mecanique with painter Susie Valdez; Coming To California, a video installation by Cause Collective, Oakland Museum of California; and a 2009 LA Ovation Award with Chris Webb for music/sound design to Lydia at Mark Taper Forum. Molina is also a member of the bands Ghosts and Strings and Transient.


Member of:

Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance.

Roberto Gutierrez Varea

San Francisco, CA

Roberto Gutierrez Varea is a stage director who began his career in theater in his native city of Cordoba, Argentina. In the US, he has directed numerous productions and workshops associated with new play development, particularly with Latina-Chicana artists. Roberto is the founding artistic director of Soapstone Theatre Company, a collective of male ex-offenders and female survivors of violent crime, and of El Teatro Jornalero!, a performance company that brings the voice of Latin American immigrant workers to the stage. He is the director of the Center for Latino Studies in the Americas (CELASA) at the University of San Francisco. Roberto is Associate Editor of Peace Review (Routledge, U.S.) and guest editor of e-misférica (NYU) and Contemporary Theater Review (Routledge, UK). The first book of his two-volume anthology Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict was published by New Village Press.


Member of:

Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance.

Victor Cartagena

San Francisco, CA

Victor D. Cartagena is a Salvadoran-born multidisciplinary visual artist. He has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions at venues in the United States including Intersection for the Arts, Ampersand International Arts, Catharine Clark Gallery, the University Art Museum at UC Berkeley, the Sonoma Museum of Visual Arts, the Oakland Museum, MACLA/Center for Latino Arts, the 18th Street Arts Complex and Art LA. Internationally, his work has been seen in Mexico, Japan, El Salvador, Belarus, Ecuador and Greece. Cartagena received a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation 2001 Visual Arts Purchase Award, the Art Council (Artadia) Award and two Pacific Prints awards.


Member of:

Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance.

Antigone Trimis

San Francisco, CA

Antigone Trimis is an arts educator, theater director and dramaturg. As the Implementation Manager of San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts (SFUSD) Education Master Plan, she has also served as Director of Outreach and Recruitment for School of the Arts High School from 2004–06. She has worked with the Magic Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation (BAPF) and the Engineers Alliance for the Arts, serving in both artistic and administrative positions. Trimis has served as Board President for Intersection for the Arts and the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation. She holds an MA in theater from Brown University.


Member of:

Secos y Mojados is a San Francisco-based collective focusing their work on immigrant narratives and explorations of interdisciplinary performance.