In Performance: ‘Our name is Moving’ by Poncili Creación
On the occasion of ‘Nonmemory,’ an exhibition curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan and organized in collaboration with the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, The Performance Project at Hauser & Wirth and Del Vaz Projects are thrilled to present ‘Our name is Moving’ an audiovisual poem by mystifying Puerto-Rican collective Poncili Creación.
Expanding on artist Mike Kelley’s interests in the complex relationship between space, memory and identity, Poncili Creación’s ‘Our name is Moving’ will project physical and psychological angst into an imaginary landscape realized within a site-specific performance at Hauser & Wirth’s East Gallery. The imaginative world of Poncili Creación will overtake an ecosystem of moveable architectures and inhabitants to depict displacement, colonization, destruction and growth as an attempt to break through frontiers and champion freedom.
The performance will showcase a live improvised musical score, audience interaction, machines disguised as puppets, and the magic of raw human power.
This event is free, however, reservations are required. Click here to register.
Take part in a creative workshop led by Poncili Creación on 28 – 29 October. Click here to learn more.
Mike Kelley is widely considered one of the most influential artists of our time. Originally from a suburb outside of Detroit, Kelley attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, before moving to Southern California in 1976 to study at California Institute of the Arts from which he received an MFA in 1978. The city of Los Angeles became his adopted home and the site of his prolific art practice. In much of his work, Kelley drew from a wide spectrum of high and low culture and was known to scour flea markets for America’s cast-offs and leftovers. Mining the banal objects of everyday life, Kelley elevated these materials to question and dismantle Western conceptions of contemporary art and culture.
The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts advances the artist’s spirit of critical thinking, risk taking, and provocation in the arts. Established by Kelley in 2007, the Foundation seeks to further Kelley’s philanthropic work through grants to arts organizations and artists for innovative projects that reflect his multifaceted artistic practice. The Foundation also preserves the artist’s legacy more broadly and fosters the understanding of his life and creative achievements through educational initiatives including exhibitions, educational events, publications and the preservation and care of the Foundation’s art collections and archives.
Curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan, ‘Nonmemory’ brings together six seminal works by Mike Kelley and a group of seven contemporary artists – Kelly Akashi, Meriem Bennani, Beatriz Cortez, Raúl de Nieves, Olivia Erlanger, Max Hooper Schneider, Lauren Halsey – whose works all play with the role of memory as it posits our perceptions of space and place. Through a variety of media and material, the artists in this exhibition use space as the repository for dreams, fantasies, traumas, and anxieties, while offering opportunities to re-imagine and recreate reality. The title of the exhibition ‘Nonmemory,’ takes direct inspiration from Kelley’s use of the term, a way of treating, reordering, and representing the complex and unstable relationship between memory, space, and identity.
About Poncili Creación
Poncili Creación lives and breathes through their soft sculptures often called puppets but previously called garbage. Repurposed material and raw human power gather in their signature audiovisual pieces which include vibrant colors, bodily movements, and a wide range of emotions that delight, scare and surprise the inner child across this globe. With thousands of collaborators and ten years of touring internationally, their shows remain shrouded in mystery and are usually announced only a few days in advance. From museums to basements, galleries to toilets, biennials to backyards, Poncili executes unorthodox TED talks disguised as puppet shows championing creativity as a means to break reality.
About The Performance Project
Encompassing performance, music, dance and film, The Performance Project showcases performing arts visionaries, both local and global, with a special focus on greater visibility for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ voices.
About Del Vaz Projects
Founded in 2014 by Jay Ezra Nayssan, Del Vaz Projects is an arts nonprofit based in Los Angeles, California. Beginning as an alternative exhibition space located in Nayssan’s home, Del Vaz Projects has expanded over the last decade into a curatorial platform, independent press, and artist production fund. In addition to the on-site projects at Del Vaz Projects, Nayssan has organized exhibitions and programming for galleries and institutions, including this year’s inaugural series of off-site projects at Frieze Los Angeles.