As a media sponsor of LIC LIVE ART festival CREATRIX Magazine interviews all participating artists in anticipation of the upcoming event, taking place on August 22nd at Culture Lab LIC at The Plaxall Gallery and organized by Local Project Art Space.
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Arantxa Araujo
During LIC LIVE ART Arantxa Araujo in collaboration with Vicios Ocultos is going to present her new work ~ONDA~
CREATRIX Magazine: What is performance art?
Arantxa Araujo: Performance art is an exceptional form of embodied and experiential art that presents the individual and groups of individuals with spaces and times for self-reflection and also for meditation. All in efforts to learn and create awareness of the problems of our time, a realization of systemic inequities and how each one might be part of the problem and/or the solution. In these realizations of what variables influence our behaviour, I use this art form as a laboratory to explore the “what ifs” and the catalysts for individual and social change. Lately, I have been really focusing on creating stimuli which aims to begin a process of healing and finding homeostasis, a sense of balance within.
CXM: Why do you choose performance art as your creative form?
AA: My background is in Neuroscience, Theater, Marketing and Yoga. The more I read about the way our mind works, the more I realize that by creating stimuli that targets more senses the more effective in creating neural connections the project is. Performance art allows for a fully embodied experience. Moreover, its participatory aspect allows individuals to be active participants in the meaning making of our work. It becomes a collaborative endeavor.
CXM: What are you going to present on August 22nd during LIC LIVE ART?
AA: As I mentioned before, I am really interested in projects that allow self-reflection and healing. I will present ~ONDAS~ a new audiovisual project that explores the curves formed on flexible surfaces/bodies and how these waves transport energy. In the study of these oscillations/disturbances we understand the movement of energy through space and matter. The idea is that a set of stimuli serve as an audiovisual oasis to sit and reflect, through our bodies these same waves pass through. The project will use projection, lights and original music in conjunction with our bodies.
CXM: Thank you! We are really excited for this wave of postCovid art!
Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican artist with a background in neuroscience. Her work is essentially multidisciplinary, feminist, and rooted in bio-behavioral research. Explorations of gender constructions, performativity and identity, and the politics of migration are seen and experienced in her installations, which often include video, sound, photography, mapping, light, and performance. Her work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, at the Radical Women Latin American Art Exhibit, Chashama Space to Present, Grace Exhibition Space, Glasshouse Gallery, The Queens Museum, Panoply Lab, Art in Odd Places in NYC; RAW during Miami Art Week; the Semel and Huret & Spector Gallery in Boston, and the SPACE Gallery and Bunker Projects in Pittsburgh; in Mexico, at El Monumento a la Revolución and La Explanada del MUAC, during the Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro and El Vicio; also participated in the Nuit Blanche Festival in Saskatoon, Canada.
Araujo is a Franklin Furnace Fund for performance art award recipient (2020/1019) BAC grantee (2020), an LMCC (2019) grantee and has received support through numerous residencies and fellowships including Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2019-2020), Creative Capital taller (2018), ITP Camp (2018, 2019) and EMERGENYC (2017). Araujo was awarded a full scholarship from Mexican Government Institution CONACYT (2012). She holds an MA in Motor Learning and Control from Teachers College, Columbia University and a BA in Theater Studies from Emerson College.
Follow her on IG @ArantxaAraujo
