Yanira Castro
Exorcism = Liberation: I came here to weep
September 6, 2024
6pm
Exorcism = Liberation is a national public art project by Yanira Castro that uses familiar forms of political media campaigns such as posters, lawn signs, stickers, and pins to explore our relationships to land, self-determination, migration, and climate disaster.
As part of this project, Abrons Arts Center will host a performance, display a poster with a QR code leading to an immersive audio experience, and distribute stickers and pins to the public.
Join us on Friday, September 6 at 6pm for a group listening of the immersive audio experience and a movement score performed by Martita Abril. Light refreshments prepared by Castro will be served as a culinary response to migration and her Boricua roots.
Digital image by Alejandro Torres Viera and Luis A. Vázquez O’Neill
About Yanira Castro
Yanira Castro (she/ella) is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. She forms iterative,
multimodal projects that center collective action in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi. Their recent work includes a
performance manual for reckoning; a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future; and I came here to weep, a collective exorcism for territorial possession. Castro has been commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, MCA Chicago, The Invisible Dog Art Center, SPACE Gallery, PICA, LMCC, The Bates Dance Festival and ICA/Boston. Her work has recently been supported by Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, The Alpert Award, a NYSCA/NYFA Choreography & Interdisciplinary Artist Fellowships, Maggie Allesee National Center for
Choreography, LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, Gibney and Marble House Project. She has received two New York Dance and Performance (aka Bessie) Awards for Outstanding Production. acanarytorsi.org
About Martita Abril
Martita Abril is from the border city of Tijuana, México. She has performed and collaborated with artists including Lux Boreal, Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Yoshiko Chuma, Milka Djordjevich, Tess Dworman, Rebecca Davis, Devynn Emory, Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, Kat Galasso, Allyson Green, Abigail Levine, Jennifer Monson, Mina Nishimura, Cori Olinghouse, Okwui Okpokwasili, Will Rawls, David Thompson, Larissa Velez-Jackson, and Cathy Weis. She was a performer in Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions, the Handles exhibition by Haegue Yang, and most recently the Joan Jonas: Mirrors I & II piece at the Museum of Modern Art. Martita was part of the Fresh TracksResidency at New York Live Arts (NYLA), Dance and Process at The Kitchen and currently she is an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research (MR) funded in part by Mertz Gilmore Foundation. She is the MR at the Judson Memorial Church Program Manager, the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Tour Manager, and continues to mentor Immigrant artists as part of the NYFA Coaching program. Martita co-curates In/Between, the yearly exhibition for Immigrant Artists originally created in 2019 by artists Yanira Castro, Martita, and Poppy DeltaDawn at NYLA and guides workshops in Bushwick gardens for Spanish speaking familias who recently arrived to NYC, through the iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance) program by Jennifer Monson.
Funding
Exorcism = Liberation is stewarded locally in Western MA by A.P.E. Ltd. in partnership with the UMass Fine Arts Center and by Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. In NYC, the project is spearheaded by Castro’s collaborative team, a canary torsi, and made possible by the generous support of Creative Capital Foundation, a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Arts Center Residency.