ITINERANT, New York City’s annual Performance Art Festival, will hold its closing event program for 2017 on Sunday, May 21th, 2:00 - 7:00 pm at the historial landmark, Flushing Meadows Park, in Queens, the borough where the festival originated. Throughout the week, the festival presented performances and public interventions in different venues in the city: Last Frontier NYC (May 13th), Socrates Sculpture Park (May 14th), The Bronx Museum of the Arts (May 15th), Panoply Performance Laboratory (May 16th), Grace Exhibition Space (May 19th), and Queens Museum (May 20th).
This year's program, organized and curated independently by interdisciplinary artist Hector Canonge, focuses on works that treat notions of human displacement, pilgrimage, physical dislocations, psychological migrations, and corporeal transformations. ITINERANT 2017 featured performance art works by local, national and international artists coming from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North America.
Participating Artists at Flushing Meadows Park: Annabele Guérédrat and Henri Tauliaut (Martinique), Nathaniel Hendrickson (United States), Eliu Almonte (Dominican Republic), Tingying Ma (China), Mina Büker (Turkey), Sylva Dean and Me (United States), Sahily Tamayo and Gregorio Alvarez (Cuba / Dominican Republic), Camila Cañeque (Spain), Leah Aron (United States), Rossella Matamoros (Costa Rica) and Autumn Kioti (United States).
ITINERANT was created in 2010 by artist Hector Canonge. The initiative was a small platform for Contemporary Performance Art, and had its origins in the monthly series A-Lab Forum that Canonge organized at Crossing Art Gallery in Flushing, Queens. Following the growing interest in Live Art, and the need to present performance in the borough, ITINERANT was launched in 2011 under the auspices of QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development. In 2012, ITINERANT was recognized by the City of New York as the first Performance Art festival taking place in the five boroughs (Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island) that make the metropolitan region. Following the large scale venture in NYC, Canonge journeyed through Europe and Latin America creating, in 2013, the Spanish edition of the festival and calling it Encuentro ITINERANTe with public presentations in various cities in the Southern Hemisphere.
Participating Artists at Flushing Meadows Park:
Annabele Guérédrat and Henri Tauliaut (Martinique)
“The Rise of the Titans”
Guest artists, Annabel Guérédrat and Henri Tauliaut are based in Martinique. They are collaborators and co-founders of FIAP, the international festival of performance art in Martinique. Guérédrat is a choreographer and dancer and Tauliaut a visual artist. They started working together in 2015, when Tauliaut invited Guérédrat to be in “Nude Descending a Staircase.” Since then, they have made over twelve performances, taking place in Martinique, Guadeloupe, the French department north of Martinique, and Jamaica. Their work includes the projects: “The Smell of Success,” which involved Guérédrat blessing the graves of the deceased with scented liquid at Guadeloupe's Morne-à-l'Eau cemetery, and the series Parade Nuptiale Iquanesque. Their performances operate under the principle of the four golden positions, standing, lying, walking, and sitting. Their most recent collaboration and recent performance is “La Machi, the Mangoose y La Serpiente” was presented at the Impératrice Hotel in Fort-de-France in the opening night of FIAP 17.
Nathaniel Hendrickson (United States)
“Dr. Dissident Drinks the Capitalist Kool-Aid”
Nathaniel Hendrickson is a New York and North Florida-based artist from Kentucky. His primary focuses are on performance, video, choreography, and drawing. Having been inculcated as a child with television, video games, Catholicism, private schooling, suburban-depraved Kentucky, a father in the military, and team sports, Hendrickson left the suburbs in search of the cosmopolitan city, living for brief periods in Louisville, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; Budapest, Hungary; and New York City. He is currently pursuing an MFA in visual art with an emphasis in performance from Florida State University. He lived and studied in New York City this past fall pursuing choreography and performance. In the years since beginning his practice “chaos” and “mimesis” have become central elements, allowing the work to take on a dialectical approach: exploring polemical discourses of order and disorder, puritanical state violence and propaganda, capitalism and ritual. His recent performance work is a response to the current social and political milieu in America (as well as its socio-historical antecedents) and grapples with a transgressive desire to “ape” and embody anxiety and political contradiction through urban performance and ritual possession. In 2016 he performed in collaboration with Gianluigi Biagini, staging Urban performances at The World Trade Center and Trump Tower. Notable exhibition/performance venues include The Sunview Luncheonette, Idio Gallery, Chez Bushwick, Aqua Art Miami Beach, 621 Gallery, Land of Tomorrow, Swanson Contemporary, and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
Eliu Almonte (Dominican Republic)
“La Bolita del Mundo”
Eliu Almonte was born in San Francisco, Dominican Republic. He lives and works in Los Angeles, as an interdisciplinary artist. He started his artistic investigations in 1979 in the painting school of the Puerto Plata master teacher Carlos de Mena. He continued in the Regional School of Fine Art of San Francisco deMacoris in 1984. His investigations spans sculpture, installation, video, performance, photography, drawing and painting. Almonte has been curator of the International Festival of Performance Independence.DO in its editions of 2011, 2012 and 2013, as well as the Actions of Autumn in 2006 and 2007. Prior he was curator of the International Chocopop Encounters from 2003 to 2005. Almonte is founder of the Dominican Platform of Performance. Prizes and Recognition 2015. Art Residency ACCIONArar. Anolaima-Cundinamarca, Colombia. 2015. Artist – in-Residence Sanctum Santorum Project, Gallery Sensei, New York. 2013. Artist – in – Residence ‘’Universitat Liure d’ Art Transmedia. La Riera de Gaia, España. 2011 National Prize of Performance, XXVI National Biennial of Visual Art, Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 2007 Artist in Residence, Edge Zones Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, USA 2007 Fellowship, Eleanor Chilton Foundation for Performance Art, program of artists in Residence, Grace Exhibition Space, New York, USA. 2001 Fellowship of the Mexican Ministry for Foreign Relations, Residency Program for artistic creation. Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Distrito Federal, Mexico 1995 National Prize for ScuplturePratsVentos from the Cultural Center of Spain, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Tingying Ma (China)
“Studies 3#”
Tingying Ma was born and raised in Chengdu, China. He lives in New York working in bilingual theater maker. His new production Future Host: A speech Opera has been premiered at Knockdown Center, Queens in January, and had its international tour to Japan as part of the 2017 Yokohama Performance Art Meeting. In 2015, the first installment of the Shujin Trilogy: S/K was produced at Signature Theatre, NY. A graduate of Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China. Tina Wang is a movement performance artist, with modern dance training and disposition to move from a place of dynamic muscular tension in physicalizing emotion. She trained at Peridance Capezio and Washington University. As a performer, she has danced with The Moving Company, Tatiana Pandiani, Katherine Maxwell, Ariel Asch, Francesca Harper, The Next Stage Project, and The Slaughter Project. With her collaborators, she has been honored to grace the stages in Israel (Leon Charney Peace Resolution Center), US-New York (Watermill Residency, The Connelly, Madison Square Park, Summerstage East River Park, Target Community Garden, Byrant Park, City Center Studios, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Schermerhorn, Salvatore Capezio Theater, Ailey Citigroup Theater, The Cutting Room, Dixon Place, and Skirball Center for the Performing Arts), and US-St. Louis (Edison Theater, Touhill Performing Arts).
Mina Büker (Turkey)
“Ellerinize Sağlık (Health to your Hands for Being a Great Cook)”
Mina Buker was born in Istanbul, Turkey in January 15, 1997. Here, she developed her skills for painting and sculpture, incorporating found objects and organic materials. In 2015 Buker moved to the U.S. after earning a Merit scholarship to receive her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Buker primarily works in painting, performance and sculpture. She uses these mediums for their willingness to be navigated by and capture every moment of making. By using natural materials, repetitive and meditative movements she focuses on how everything is made by repetition but each part is naturally doomed to be unique; even they act same. While she draws inspiration from her cultural background and worldwide political tensions, Buker explores how meditation and art can be a way of release when it comes to dealing with fear; either caused by politic instability or the future of humanity. Her first two years living in the States, Buker has been progressively involved in Chicago’s performance art scene. She has been performing as part of “The (((WAVER)) Project” sponsored by HLC in Mana Contemporary Chicago since 9 months, performed in Dfbl8tr Performance Art Gallery, No Nation Gallery and Mana Contemporary Chicago. She has performed her solo piece “The Burial of Heroism” as part of the 2016 residency of ‘Industry of The Ordinary’. Recently she performed with Artist Group ‘Non-Grata’ at the Dfbl8tr Gallery.
Sylva Dean and Me (United States)
“Through Which They Pass”
Peering out beneath her blank, cracked doll mask, bound by a corseted and constricting bodice constructed from an underlying, ungiving wire dress form, Sylva Dean and Me explores gender performativity and the continuous, ever evolving relationship with otherness. Stripped of explicit identity, Sylva Dean and Me acts as a palimpsest upon which to redraw the illness of humanity and the stark beauty accompanying it. Ventiko created Sylva Dean and Me in 2011 to explore and occupy a liminal space; between performance art, sculpture, Butoh, theater, installation, and now Opera. Utilizing wearable sculptures made from reclaimed milk cartons found at a nursery school in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where she resides. Since their inception Sylva Dean and Me has performed at galleries (Project for Empty Space, Panoply, Culture Fix, Like the Spice, Michael Llyons Project Space, Chinatown Soup), art fairs (Select Art Fair, Maverick), museums (M.O.M.A, TATE Modern), festivals (BIPAF, Performatorio IV) and in the public sphere internationally in New York, New Jersey, Miami, London, Belgrade Serbia and the Dominican Republic. They have received critical acclaim in Gothamist, Hyperallergic, Cool Hunting, Artnet News, Artist News amongst others and has appeared in Vogue Italia.
Sahily Tamayo & Gregorio Alvarez (Cuba / Dominican Republic)
“WT”
Born in Cuba, Sahily Tamayo graduated in Nivel Medio en Actuación while studying with the troupe Espacio Interior. She holds a degree in theatoer from the Instituto Superior de Arte en La Habana. While studying, she worked as an assistant director for Ciervo Encantado, a group that centers its work and research around Performance Art. She later went to work as consultant for the develpment of the project La Isla Secreta in Habana. She has been living in the United States since 2015, and has worked in performance at the Micro-teatro in Miami, Florida. She is preparing the participate in this year’s program of ITINERANT Performance Art Festival of NYC. Gregorio Alvarez was born in the Dominican Republic. Alvarez works in music and art since a very young age. Alvarez strives to document life as it swirls around both disciplines, and the artist is constantly reaching for new and innovative forms of expression from a vantage point firmly grounded in personal experiences.
Camila Cañeque (Spain)
“The Same Song”
Camila Cañeque is a Spanish performance artist whose practice incorporates the construction and incarnation of characters, temporarily becoming someone or something else to reflect on contemporary dramas and, principally, to disentangle from identity as a fixed unit. Her work has also been considered as a live form of literature, dwelling somewhere between role and self -or fiction and fact-. The personas recurrently inhabit a passive attitude within a circular time, a permanent standby without beginning or end, and they frequently adopt a horizontal position. Also, they carry on endemic dysfunctionalities: a dancer that doesn’t dance, an activist that doesn’t act, a singer that doesn’t sing. Her pieces have been performed at The Kitchen (NY), Vermelho Gallery (São Paulo), Microscope Gallery (NY), Fabra i Coats (Barcelona), Glasshouse Project (NY), The Queens Museum of Art (NY), Lázaro Galdiano Museum (Madrid), Kulturhuset Museum (Stockholm), among others. Cañeque has also participated in residencies at the Nida Art Colony (Lithuania), Largo das Artes (Rio de Janeiro), Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik - ZK/U (Berlin) or the Nau Estruch Space for Live Art (Sabadell). Her work has been featured in numerous publications such a Art Observed, Hyperallergic, EMERGENCY INDEX (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Journal, BOMB Magazine, El País, El Confidencial, El Mundo, and so on. She currently lives and works in Girona and New York. 
Leah Aron (United States)
“Salt of the Earth”
Leah Aron is a New York-based performance artist interested in methods and aesthetics that are not traditionally associated with standards of perfection. The calamity of being female saturates her work. Her main goal in performance is “to achieve altered states of consciousness, exploring the polarity of embodied experience from exhaustion to exhilaration, pain to pleasure.” Aron’s body is her medium, often incorporating duration, repetition, movement, and stillness. She has worked closely with Karen Finley, Linda Montano, and Marina Abramovic. Finding inspiration in her self-described surreal perception of moving through the world, she stages acts of desire and repulsion that unmask the power and trauma of identity.
Rossella Matamoros (Costa Rica)
“Under the Clear Blue Sky”
Matamoros earned her MFA from George Washington University. She is a Fulbright Scholar 1988-93, and has participated in national and international exhibitions since 1984. In the United States, , Latin America, Asia and Europe. Has also developed work on performance somce 1998, dramatirgy of dress, set design, installation and video. Has taught classes at the University of Costa Rica, Georgetown University and has been a foreign language docent at the Smithsonian Museums. Work based on trauma and recovery, anthropology and sociology. At the moment presenting the first monumental exhibit based on the Indigenous Costa Rican Women yesterday and today at the National Museum, Costa Rica as part of the 130 celebrations of the Museum.