Installation Performance Collaboration
Arepas, Hot Chocolate, Cardboard
2018

On October 25th, 2018 for our Parsons BFA Open Studios I used my studio to hold space for POC during the event –
“PARA NOSOTRES” took place in my studio as an interactive collaborative performance/installation where I gave out arepas made by mi mama, Olga Lucia Saavedra-Flores alongside Colombian hot chocolate that we made together
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The arepas + hot chocolate were only given out after asking the audience members if they identify as a person of color. POC audience members were then invited into my studio space, asked to take their shoes off, sit on the cardboard and then were fed and included in the conversation taking place. The large cardboard sheets in my studio aimed to construct a brown space out of a daily object and were able to be shifted/slid for the audience to enter/exit the space + for the outside audience to be unable to see inside
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Thinking about: the body as a material, gendered labor, daily objects, queerness + the domestic, art as a social practice, cultivating spaces for community, focusing on our own narratives, formality/professionalism in art as a white concept, public + private, the identity of the audience in relation to their critiques of art, decolonizing/deconstructing critique