The Ritual of the Dirty Faces : The Conversion of Maize into Pop Corn
"Crispeta" (pop corn) is a popular homophobic slur in the Caribbean area in Colombia; We re-appropriate it and celebrate it with opulence while attempting to build intersectional bridges and winks between the LGBTIQA struggle and those of historically oppressed cultures such as pre-Columbian and the African diaspora. This performance was inspired by black and indigenous rituals traditionally stigmatized as witchcraft. We have made references and simultaneously invented ancestral traditions and wisdom (incorporating elements of Caribbean contemporary spiritual imaginary and pop culture) to perform a ritual by way of magical invocation and initiation to the gender disorder that is only allowed to flow in Barranquilla during the Carnival. The ritual appeals to powerful forces capable of slashing, blurring and reconfiguring the rigid boundaries between the masculine and the feminine, the permissible and the frowned, between the straight and the homosexual.
LA PUNTICA NO MA' (our carnival parade) took part in the exhibition "Finding El Dorado" at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bogota in June-July 2017. We presented Jorge Cadena's film about "The Ritual of the Dirty Faces : The Conversion of Maize into Pop Corn", a performance by Carlos Maria Romero & Jair Luna did during the Barranquilla Carnival in February the same year.
Makeup: Felipe Ginebra / Music mix: Dengue Dengue Dengue; Why Be & Elysia Crampton & Chino Amobi; Jack & Jill; NKISI; Jeimison; Faka; Juliana Huxtable; Shakira, Mandine Knoepfel / Technical support: Matthias Lintner, Santiago Latorre / Film: Jorge Cadena / Performers: Paul B. Zambrano, Carlos Maria Romero & Jair Luna / Presented in the exhibition "To dust you will return - The 7 dreams"; curated by Leonardo Peña; produced by Ledys Aristizabal, general management by: Jorge Pinilla.
Crispeta es popularmente un insulto homofóbico en la región del Caribe Colombiano; nos lo hemos re-apropiado y lo celebramos con opulencia a la vez que hemos intentado hacer paralelos y puentes entre las resistencias de las personas LGBTI, las culturas indígenas y la diáspora africana a la histórica demonización de sus manifestaciones y sabidurías. Por medio de un rito que incorpora elementos del imaginario y la cultura popular Caribeña se invoca a fuerzas capaces de rajar, desdibujar y reconfigurar los límites entre lo masculino y lo femenino, lo permitido y lo mal visto, entre lo hetero y lo homosexual, para dar inicio así al desorden de género que acontece solamente durante el carnaval.
LA PUNTICA NO MA' presentó películas de Jorge Cadena y Vanessa Marino sobre "El Ritual de las Caras Sucias : La conversión del Maíz en Crispeta", performance que realizaron Carlos Maria Romero y Jair Luna durante los Carnavales de Barranquilla en Febrero de 2017 en la exposición "Encontrando el Dorado" en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá de junio a julio de ese mismo año.