In 2017, I directed the live artwork "Orbit" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in which myself and performance artists Amapola Prada and Elizabeth Sonnenburg, lived for 10-days in between the narrow window panes of the museum's theater in a biosphere set. Our conditions partially emulated the simulation projects conducted by universities and space agencies to test human life on spacecrafts and planets like Mars, but prioritized artistic and esoteric agendas that culminated into an experiment for "real theater".
I will be sharing my story with this artwork and other works to open up a discussion about how we live and can we? Racism, classicism, and gender and body- ableism discrimination has positioned this question differently to each of us. It is my interest that we discuss our answers to these questions not theoretically but from the reality of our personal embodiment of the effects and promises we contain within us- a bodily archive- from activities of abuse, denial, and resilience.
biography
MPA is an artist who engages her body in performance and installation pieces. She explores the social and political implications of the body as a site of resistance in her work. Her body of work Directing Light onto Fist of Father (2011), shown at Leo Koenig Inc. combined 16mm film and a plaster cast of her father's fist in an installation inciting three durational performances. Trilogy (o) (2012) centered on photographs of Nike war missiles as an orbiting moon calendar at the arts cooperative Human Resources in Los Angeles.
MPA's works and performances have been seen at the Swiss Institute, the Whitney Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Stedelijk Museum, the Center for Performance Research, The Kitchen, Hudson Guild Theater, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art in General, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Oaxaca; and Meat Market Gallery, Washington D.C. MPA is a frequent collaborator, and is visible in works by contemporary photographers, painters, and performers.
After her FCA support, MPA relocated to Twentynine Palms, California to research somatic practices. Prior to her Grants to Artists, MPA received a Community Arts Assistant Program Grant in Chicago (2006), and was an artist-in-residence at La Pocha Nostra Residency in Oaxaca, Mexico (2006); the Hancock & Kelly Live Artist Residency, Nottingham, United Kingdom (2007); the International Artists Studio, Stockholm (2010); and the Denniston Hill Artist Residency in Woodridge, NY (2010).