Queer New York International Arts Festival

The festival opens with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From 5 to 95, a video installation and art web project documenting intergenerational stories and experiences of girls and women living in Croatia.  Women’s stories, have throughout history been either censored or auto censored. In a conservative society such as Croatian, some immanently female experiences are not being shared, and certain life lessons of high value are still being transmitted exclusively by oral traditions from one generation to another. The installation will be available for viewing throughout the Festival.

This installation will be available to public view on Monday, Feb 12 during the “Curating Queer” panel; you can RSVP here.

Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković spent several months with four Argentinian sex workers, leading to their theater piece, Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising,) which reveals  aspects of sex work we rarely think about. Performed by the sex workers, and through their stories,  we enter the world of sex work defined both by personal choice and circumstances.

Croatian choreographers/dancers Mia Zalukar and Bruno Isaković have collaborated on Kill B., a dance performance inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 cult movie Kill Bill. Zalukar and Isaković create a performative analysis of their own long-term professional relationship, questioning the hierarchical structures inside the theatre-making process and the power dynamic between the two, at least in theory, equal partners.

Join us for a conversation with curator Zvonimir Dobrović and artists Arijana Lekić Fridrih, Clayton Lee, & Bruno Isaković – on queer art, global meanings, the possibility and impossibility of translation, and what “queer” means and maps for each of them in their work, on and off the stage. Moderated by J de Leon – NYU Skirball’s Director of Engagement.

This event is free and open to the public.

In The Goldberg Variations, Canadian performance artist Clayton Lee freely references and entangles queer diasporic sexuality and aesthetics with classical music (Johann Sebastian Bach) and professional wrestling (Bill Goldberg).

Conference, from Argentinian artist Tiziano Cruz, is a lecture-performance created from a selection of autobiographical events. Cruz composes scenic narratives invoking the memory of the body and the power of his Andean ancestors, in a desperate attempt, not only to silence the mourning of his dead sister, but also, as a possibility to reconcile with the world. There will be a discussion following the performance.

Wagner Schwartz will engage in a conversation with André Lepecki about “La Bête,” the controversy in 2017, the relation between performance, dance and the political, but also about his broader artistic work as one of the most influential Brazilian choreographers working today in the eve before presenting “La Bête” at NYU’s Skirball as part of Queer New York International Arts Festival curated by Zvonimir Dobrovic.

This event will take place at NYU’s Department of Performance Studies – 721 Broadway. 

Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz performs an interactive and participatory solo, in which he is reactivating the famous figure of the Bicho (or “Beast”), the adjustable metal sculpture which the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark produced as a series in the early 1960s.

Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte have created an evening of works by the late German choreographer Raimund Hoghe in a tribute performed by his dancers.