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Religious syncretism was effectively and fruitfully realized in many
Latin countries because of the profoundly dramatic nature of Spanish Catholicism.
Unlike the visual and physical austerity of Protestant faiths that were
brought to North America during the colonial period, Spanish Catholicism
of the Counter-Reformation provided a rich and varied gestural and imagistic
vocabulary that could easily be inflected with African and indigenous mythologies. |
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the 17th century. During the early colonial period as much as twenty
percent of the urban female populations of the New Spain and the
Viceroyalty of Peru lived in cloisters in which they were able
to learn to read and
to avoid marriage and childbirth. Their daily routines were punctuated
by the continuous performance of faith. The highly regimented schedules
of these women resembled those of many performers who were pioneers
in the
field of body art in the 60s and 70s. |
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VOTOS premiered at the 3rd Annual Performance Festival in Odense,
Denmark in September 1999. I also performed it at the Washington State University
Museum, and the Nexus Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta, and The Project
in Harlem, New York. The piece was presented as part of Expo 2000 in Germany
in August, 2000. |
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VOTOS is a performance that springs from my exploration of the corporeal
language of Latin Catholicism. In developing this piece, I studied the practices
of contemporary penitentes, read the poetry and theological tracts of Christian
mystics, and studied anthropological writings on the activities of cloistered
women in Mexico and Peru in |
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