I Brought You Flowers | Te Traje Flores
new work by Marcela Torres
March 15 - May 4, 2024
I Brought You Flowers/Te Traje Flores is a site that considers the cultural resonance of gifting flowers as acts of nurturing within BIPOC communities.
Inspired by Nahua and Mayan codices and contemporary writing that breaks down their logographic terms. Flowers symbolize places and names, the exhibition explores the profound connection between botany, our ancestral heritage, and the act of giving. Central to the exhibit are ceramic pieces cradling flowers, each representing a spectrum of recipients: flowers to ourselves, xochitl to our ancestor, flores to the earth weaving a rich tapestry of interconnectedness and reconciliation.
About the Artist
EXHIBITION OPENING PHOTOS
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Marcela Torres is an artist, organizer, and educator that uses strength-building exercises and community rituals, to propose forms of reparations. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah and residing nomadically. Their physical research builds on methods of transcendental rituals, racial struggles within the United States and contemporary Latinx diaspora. Torres received a BA in Sculpture Intermedia and a BFA in Art History from the University of Utah, continuing their studies with a MFA in Performance from School of the Art Institute Chicago. Torres has performed at Performance Space New York, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Momentary, Fringe Festival and Time Based Arts. Torres has exhibited work at Hyde Park Art Center, UW-Parkside University and Petzel Gallery. Torres has been in residency at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Franconia Sculpture Park, Recess, Links Hall and Creative Exchange PICA. They were a 2022 Chicago Dance Maker Forum Lab Artist, and a 2023 IACA Artist Fellowship Awardee for New Forms.
¿Para Qué? - Perdón Que No Fue Pedido
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
8:00 PM 10:00 PM
Green Line Performing Arts Center
photos by Anjali Pinto
¿Para qué? - Perdón Que No Fue Pedido, is a performance that considers reconciliation for past relationships and matriarchal bonds. Torres plays between dream building, ceremony and delusion, to understand how memories can be reconfigured as a site of coping to build new ideas of self. This work considers how we give our ancestors, our mothers and ourselves "our flowers".
Choreography consulting: Valentia Bache
Performers: Elena Torres, Aleen Olivares, Maire O'Neill and Carissa Lee-Pinckney
Songs by: Susana A. Banuelos OllinKuikatl
Production: The Green Line Performing Art Center
Support from Sheridan Tucker Anderson
* This performance contains partial nudity and mention of animal violence.
This program is presented in collaboration with EXPO CHICAGO as the official start of EXPO ART WEEK.
