Yanira Castro

Artist Statement

My work is grounded in Puerto Rican experience as communal experience, Puerto Rican voices as an integral, contested part of U.S. history. A history that is tied intimately to ongoing, critical questions of how citizenship and civil rights are defined in this country currently called the U.S. In my work, I utilize government language alongside materials I grew up with–papier-mâché masks, my grandmother's Spanish lace tablecloth, Puerto Rican meals–and speculative language to insist on centering the Caribbean. I utilize participatory scores as the nexus of creation, negotiation and interpretation. The scores—a set of actions to be interpreted—take myriad forms: live performance, printed manuals, installations, meals, a podcast, online archives, video, audio, a media campaign. For me, performance is a public rehearsal for civics, for participation and choice-making. It is being in negotiation with each other: grappling with communication, with action, with discomfort and being deeply in process together. Performance is a communal act that requires us.

Yanira Castro I came here to weep (2023) Performance Premiered at The Chocolate Factory Theater

Bio

Yanira Castro’s work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico) and lives in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Castro develops performance scores and scenarios where the work unfolds in real time in response to the presence and participation of the audience. Co-creating with her collaborators and the public under the name a canary torsi, she investigates choreography as a practice of collective embodiment, grappling with agency and communal action as a body politic. The process of gathering, witnessing, and decision-making is where performance and civics merge and, for her, is the critical, challenging, and transformational work of performance. She is the recipient of awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist and Choreography Fellowships and has received two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production. She has recently been in residence at LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, and The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She is excited to be returning to Marble House Project.

acanarytorsi.org