Textured Translations: A night of performances
Ground Level Platform Gallery, Chicago, IL. April 12, 2019
Spanish Speaking Household was a narrative performance, sharing the changing emotional states of being in conflict with a loved one as a parallel to the experience of being in conflict by the pressure feeling a cultural responsibility to speak Spanish while not actually being able to. In stages, the performance moved between three different baths of chili pepper concentrate: starting at the hottest residual contact burn, taking rinses in a milk bath to neutralize the burn, then moving into the next lower-lowest residual contact burn.
By the end of the performance, after each milk bath, the final chili bath had the experience of a soft tingle, that filled the gallery with the sweet, chocolatey smell of ancho chili. There is both forgiveness and resolution at the end of the fight, while also peace with oneself over being self-forgiving to the ongoing efforts to learn Spanish as a personal cultural link.
