Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Performance artist, writer and MacArthur fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña will make a rare appearance in Indiana in conjunction with the project/installation Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other, which will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from March 16 through April 17, 2005.

Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other is a contemporary wonder cabinet, the product of a collaboration between curator Kaytie Johnson and performance artist/writer and self-styled "reverse anthropologist" Guillermo Gómez-Peña. The project reflects a current trend in which curators and artists throughout the world are experimenting with original presentational formats for contemporary art which take into consideration the drastic epistemological changes in the relationship between audience and cultural institution, as well as artist and audience, produced by the current mainstream culture of interactivity and role playing.

Containing a selection of pop ethnography, political kitsch, "high" velvet art, barrio conceptual art, one-of-a-kind artist books and archaeological performance props and costumes, Borderabilia: The Museum of the "Globalized" Other is an installation that critically examines the techniques and narratives of display by situating objects and notions of collecting within the context of the "Fourth World. The fascination for collecting natural and man-made wonders was immensely popular in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Wealthy collectors often displayed their encyclopedic collections of paintings, sculpture, and natural and artificial exotica in rooms known as Wunderkammers, literally "wonder cabinets." During this age of exploration, these cabinets became "theaters of the universe" in which the new discoveries of the world were proudly displayed and consumed.

In his solo performance El Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, Guillermo Gómez-Peña is back as a spoken word brujo-poet who explores the fear of immigration, the dark side effects of globalization, the digital divide, censorship and interracial sexuality. Continually developing multicentric narratives from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña creates what critics have termed "Chicano cyberpunk performances." Using spoken word, multilingualism, humor and hybrid literary genres as subversive strategies, Gómez-Peña moves cultural borders to the centers and pushes the alleged to the margins, placing the audience member in the position of "foreigner."

This solo performance will be followed at 8:30 pm by Border Karaoke, an interactive performance directed by Gómez-Peña that will take place in the Visual Arts Gallery at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University. Audience members are invited to bring ethnic costumes and props, and to dress as their favorite "cultural other."

Gómez-Peña's performance and installation work has been presented at over seven hundred venues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina. Through his organization La Pocha Nostra, Gómez-Peña has focused very intensely in the notion of collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generation as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means to create "ephemeral communities."

The exhibition and all events are free and open to the public.

SPECIAL EVENTS

"El Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator"
March 31, 2005, 7:30 pm, Thompson Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
A solo performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

"Border Karaoke"
March 31, 2005, 8:30 pm, Visual Arts Gallery, Richard E. Peeler Art Center
An interactive performance where audience members are invited to come dressed as their favorite "cultural other," or to bring props and costumes that can be used to create performance personas in "ethnic drag."

These events have been sponsored in part by the DePauw Public Occasions Committee, the Committee for Latina/o Concerns, United DePauw, Ladies Aligning for Cross-Cultural Excellence and the Butler Family Fund.

For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882