Exhibition
Screens Series: Naomi Rincón Gallardo
06/30/22-10/16/22
Performances · Exhibition-Related
Performative Screening of The Formaldehyde Trip
Cover Image: Naomi Rincón Gallardo, The Formaldehyde Trip, 2017. Photo: Eliana Cetto
Join artist Naomi Rincón Gallardo (b. 1979) for a performative screening of her film The Formaldehyde Trip (2017) in the New Museum Theater. A dynamic and experimental story-teller, Rincón Gallardo mixes live performance with video projections to expand upon her “mythical-critical surrealist” narratives, using pre-colonial myths to find anti-colonial poetic weapons against injustices of the present.
Made in honor of human rights activist Alberta “Bety” Cariño, The Formaldehyde Trip imagines the activist’s passage through the underworld after she was murdered in a paramilitary ambush in April 2010. Through music, dance, improvisation, digital animations, and excerpts of speeches by Cariño, the lively, eventful, and mesmerizing journey unfolds as a series of encounters with spirit animals, women warriors, witches, and Mesoamerican deities. The journey is narrated from the perspective of an axolotl preserved in formaldehyde, played sometimes by the artist herself. Almost extinct in its natural habitat, this species of aquatic salamander explains to us how Cariño’s murder is directly associated with the maintenance of colonial power structures.
Featuring an original soundtrack by composer Federico Schmucler set to Rincón Gallardo’s lyrics, the film comprises nine distinct musical numbers with interchanging parts in Spanish, English, and German. In this her live performance of The Formaldehyde Trip, Rincón Gallardo expands “Bety” Cariño’s feminist legacy and challenges hegemonic forms of social categorization and hierarchization, imagining a vibrant and surreal environment of pleasure and flourishing interdependence in the face of brutality and expropriation.
Tickets
This event has reached capacity.
The program will be presented onsite at the New Museum. All attendees are required to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. Performers may be un-masked and will be socially distanced from the audience while performing. Review the New Museum’s COVID guidelines in advance of your visit.
Accessibility
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Sponsors
This event is co-presented by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) and the New Museum.
This program is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Special thanks to Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico.
