Alejandro de la Guerra // Diffuse (Performance)

Diffuse, new performance commissioned from Alejandro de la Guerra
The ICA at VCU, 4:30 pm, February 25, 2020

In “Diffuse” artist Alejandro De La Guerra enacts a powerful metaphor of migration and displacement. Informed by the artist’s experiences growing up in Nicaragua, De La Guerra brings together structures of childhood play, gestures of protest and of shamanistic healing in a symbolic and absurdist journey that culminates not in an arrival but, rather, in the invocation of a perpetual cycle of placeless-ness. The performance begins at the Anderson (907 1/2 W Franklin St) at 4:30pm with the artist gradually making his way across VCU’s Monroe Park campus toward the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA, 601 W Broad St). Reaching the ICA, De La Guerra will begin an act of encircling the ICA grounds. At intervals De La Guerra will set off a series of smoke bombs, collapsing the multiple significances of smoke (as part of a universal repertoire of protest; as a key component in traditional rites of healing; and as a signal for making lost persons visible and—implicitly—rescuable) into his paradoxical efforts to both conjure and confront a phantom border.
De La Guerra’s performance is the final gesture of the exhibition “Stone’s Throw: Arte de Sanación, Arte de Resistencia”, curated by Laura August, which closes 2/25.
Special thanks to the @icavcu , @amberesseiva , and artist @guadalupe__maravilla for their support of this project! Additional (and very special) thanks to the @iieglobal Artist Protection Fund and the @uconn School of Fine where @alejandrofloresdelaguerra is currently in residence as an @artistprotectionfund Fellow
#vcuarts #theanderson #icavcu #alejandrodelaguerra #artederesistencia