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In 2016, I alongside a handful of others
put on the very first Latinx Performance Art Festival--ever. In 2017, this was included in the latest
edition of the book Performance: A Critical Introduction-- recent editions
include me and the "Putoh Performance" art form that I created. I am sending out additional information to
graduate programs that they may use in their classes.
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Who
is Xavier Lopez?
Xavier Lopez is a contemporary, Latino, conceptual,
mixed media and performance artist.
Lopez received his MFA from the University of California, Davis, where
he created the theoretical/artistic thesis of the "Soft Cyborg." As a "Post-Pop Artist," he is part of a young group of artists who
are seeking to move beyond contemporary mainstream art ideas, becoming post
genre, mixing sculpture, performance art, theory, painting and anything else
they can get their hands on to create something exciting and new. In 2016, allied with La Sala--a leading
Latino Arts organization in Seattle, Washington, Xavier Lopez and Lauren Davis
put together the very first Latinx Performance Art Festival. (They are currently planning more in the
series.) Then in 2017, Xavier Lopez
alongside Vicente Montanez were cited in the Routledge critical theoretical
textbook "Performance: A Critical Introduction"--by Marvin Carlson in
the third edition of his seminal work, as leading figures in the Latinx
Performance Art movement, something for which they are extremely proud. This acts as supplemental material to the
Routledge book and all material herein is verified and suitable to be used for
course studies.
This, then is the final wording for the book
"Performance: A Critical Introduction" straight from the pen of
Marvin Carlson:
"The First Latinx performance venue was
established in 2013, the Teatro Publico
de Cleveland, and there is a growing body of theatre artists who specifically
identify themselves as Latinx, headed by Xavier Lopez Jr. and Vicente Montanez.
Lopez created the first festival of Latinx performance, held at the Good Arts
center for experimental theatre in Seattle in 2016, in which Montanez
performed. Lopez is also co-creator, with performance artist Katherine Adamenko
of New York City, of Putoh performance, a melding of Chicano performance art
and contemporary art inspired by Butoh."
Lopez is part of a new breed of Latinx artists for
whom art-making, while still personal and autobiographical in the broadest
sense, eschews the obvious tropes of masculinity, hegemony and race with very
little regard for the overbearing visual, cultural history that has proven to
be overpowering for so many artists of this age--especially artists of
color. Instead, as an Hispanic artist,
it has become clear to Lopez over the course of his thirty-plus year career that
his work has focused on a more personal kind of conceptualism, centering on
autobiography and his own set of obsessions, hopes and fears.
Lopez has shown artwork on both American coasts as
well as in Germany, England and France, and he has come to be known for his own
brand of lush, conceptual, post post-modern sculpture, especially his
"sheet ghost" installations, flower Rorschachs, tin foil mountains,
and, of course, his performance art.
As a child in the seventies, before Lopez even knew
what art was, his father was in the Chicano Art Movement in Los Angeles and the
younger Lopez would tag along to the "Mechicano" Art Centers of
Southern California mentally devouring the exciting scenes of Chicano artists
making political and historical work, expressing first-hand what it meant to be
a "Chicano" in the seventies.
Days would pass as he watched his father paint murals, all the while,
day-dreaming of his own future. Lopez'
parents often took their three children to the Los Angeles Museum of Art, where
he saw Warhol's Brillo Boxes and his first conceptual sculptures.
Later, in college, his mind would be blown by the
work of Marcel Duchamp and the later neoDadas.
He has had many mentorships, receiving advice and encouragement from
feminist Lynn Hershman, taking performance art classes from theorist Joanna
Frueh, creating the "Putoh" art form with Katharine Adamenko,
sneaking into Wayne Thiebaud's classes at UC Davis and arguing about art with
critic Dave Hickey, but his biggest mentor of them all has been his sculpture
instructor at the University of Nevada Reno, Robert Morrison, who taught him
how to think for himself, how to weld and to work with his hands.
It was also
at university that he began to notice a big difference between how his heroes
made art and how he was expected to make art.
When a Duchamp or a Beuys made their work it was about ideas, it was
about their ideas and it reflected the way that they saw the world. With this realization, Lopez decided that he
would take an oppositional stand and make art that came from his own personal
experiences, that he would make work that was unique to his own, singular
viewpoint and that above all else it would be art that was about ideas. From then on Lopez sought to make his own way
as an individual artist, seeking to express his own view of the universe and to
speak of his own personal issues, obsessions and desires. This has become a very important stance of
liberation, which in and of itself is powerful and revolutionary.
Lopez career
is a journey and a complex intellectual investigation--at the same time,
however, it is not a refutation of
difference, history or culture--as that is also a very important part of Lopez'
(hi(s)tory--rather, Lopez work is about those areas where we come together,
aware that we are not post-race and that his work is not either.
As an artist, Lopez' career has been multivalent,
mixing sculpture, performance art, theory and painting, creating a body of work
that is experimental and fierce--with the power of a slap to the back of the
head. Lopez has been part of several
high-profile art events at the Seattle Art Museum, 4Culture, Artist Trust,
Seattle Arts & Culture and most recently he has worked with the Seattle
Latinx organization "La Sala" for their "La Cocina" project
where he put together and performed in the first ever night of all-Latinx
performance art. He is a recipient of
the prestigious 2016 Artist Up Grant Lab Award as well as several other grants,
fellowships and commissions from various American cities.
Lopez is continually, growing and evolving. Fans of his work can always expect a sense of
wonder, innocence and experience, but mostly a celebration of imagination and
discovery that keeps drawing more and more viewers to play in the “Deep End” of
his imagination. “I want viewers of my
work to feel as they do just before going over the cliff at Splash Mountain,
that feeling of elation, terror, excitement--all of it!”--he has said.
Biographical
Statement:
"My father was a
muralist in the 1970's Los Angeles Chicano Art Movement, where amazing Mexican
painters expressed what it meant to be "Chicano," in the museums I
watched "European" artists sculpt and create performance art; both
inspired me. As an undergraduate, Marcel
Duchamp, influenced my now, mixed-media performances. At UCDavis, critical theory opened me up to
incorporate queer, feminist and other identity discourses. There, I created two theoretical treatises,
"Soft Cyborg," a variation on Haraway's "Cyborg" and
"Putoh"--melding Japanese Butoh and Latino identity performance. In 2016, I created "On the Edge: Latinx
Performance Art" the first all-Latinx performance art festival in Seattle,
with organizational assistance from Lauren Davis (La Sala and Art Exchange
Gallery.) I came to understand how
profoundly new this concept was-worldwide, when Marvin Carlson named me and our
event in Routledge's textbook "Performance: A Critical Introduction"
becoming part of university curricula across the globe.
I am a conceptual,
Latinx, performance artist, receiving my MFA from the University of
California-Davis. Through performance I
seek to push the boundaries of how we perceive the essence of
ethnic/cultural/Latinx performance, to give voice to underrepresented groups
and, moreover, to expand the language of marginalized performance and even to
broaden access through guerrilla and drop-in performances. I am part of a new wave of Latinx artists
intent on expanding the themes and expectations available to minority
artists--making art that is individual--defying traditional expectations of
collective identity. I choose personal
materials, a collage of bed-sheets, tin foil and personal items in order to
tell my stories. This is an important
conceptual, performative and material shift that cannot be overstated. It is a stance of liberation, which defies
traditional expectations and dares to say that individual lives of color
matter; which in itself is powerful and revolutionary, problematizing racial,
masculine, cultural and identity essentialism in an intellectual investigation
which is in no way post-race.
As an example of my
process, the performance "The Impossibility of Truly Understanding the
Other;" exemplifies my praxis and my theories of what a Latinx theoretical
movement would entail. Beginning with a
theoretical, pro-feminist idea, influenced by Judith Butler and other feminist
writers, my process then moves into a more personal tone centering around
everything my mother gave up as a Latina woman.
My work is multi-vocal and purely Latinx, refusing essentialist
identity, as Marvin Carlson describes in his first description of our work
before the most recent update in "Performance: A Critical
Introduction," "There is a growing body of...artists who specifically
identify themselves as Latinx, headed by...Xavier Lopez...These and others were
featured in the first festival of Latinx performance, held at the Good Arts
center...in Seattle... Latinx represents an important orientation in modern
performance...concern(ed) with developing more inclusive and flexible attitudes
toward designations of gender, race, and ethnicity."
I seek to engender,
enlarge and expand the conversation of what Latina/x/o art is and what it can
be. We live at a time in which definitions of race, masculinity, gender and art
are changing, and through my performance I seek to be a voice in this change and
to translate this mission into a body of work that is consistent with these
goals.
What exactly is Putoh?
Putoh is a hybrid in
every sense of the word. Putoh
celebrates individuality and intersectionality.
Invented in the year 2000 at the University of California Davis, it is a
portmanteau of ideas, vision and philosophies.
It is pre-Latinx and yet very much presages the current movement in many
ways and Putoh may in fact be the first truly post-post modern movement of the
new millennium. Linguistically, the term
"Putoh" is a fusion of two languages, two words, but many ideas. Of course there is the Japanese Butoh,
meaning, literally Dance, but also the Spanish-in this case-Mexican, gutter word
Putoh, which
has many meanings, but which has a very similar etymological history to the
word "Punk" and it is in that spirit that the two words were
married.
The performance form itself was created by a
Chicano, pre-Latino, pre-Latinx, Mexican American and a Jewish Cuban
woman. These two bringing their
experiences and ideals to the artistic form.
Both feminists, performance artists, university students and multimedia
artists, Katherine Adamenko and Xavier Lopez came from very different
backgrounds Xavier, a California Mexican American complete with a "Valley
Girl" brogue and Katherine Adamenko New
York City Jewish and Cuban/Spanish feminist performance artist with a
huge personality were destined to create something that the world was not
prepared for--something that refuses to be categorized, meshes forms and
cultures, creating a Post-postmodern world of intersectionality and a multidisciplinary melding of art and
performance.
Links:
Xavier Lopez' Website: https://xavierlopezjr.wixsite.com/into-the-deep-end
Video documentary overview of Xavier Lopez'
performance art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0MJ1azq19c&feature=youtu.be
Katherine Adamenko's Website: https://www.ladypants.com/
Googlebooks: https://books.google.com/books?id=Szg7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT449&lpg=PT449&dq=xavier+lopez+performance+latinx&source=bl&ots=vP4Vc2S8Rn&sig=LT3LzqFj45qSwb0BKseSXYaceV8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVwubwrdXfAhWmIjQIHRHkCDsQ6AEwB3oECF0QAQ#v=onepage&q=xavier%20lopez%20performance%20latinx&f=false
Article: https://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlearts/2017/12/17/memories-of-christmas-past-the-author-goes-back-in-time-to-a-simpler-age-and-graduate-papers-past/
Attachments: Video Documentary overview of Xavier
Lopez' Performance Art (Suitable for presentation in whole or in part and
suitable for screen grabs.)
Various images of Xavier and Putoh performance
Xavier Lopez is available for interview,
presentation, etc.,via his
website at: https://xavierlopezjr.wixsite.com/into-the-deep-end/contact
