Artemisa Clark

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THERE IS A DEVIL INSIDE ME, 2015, live performance, TRT: 46:20, Public Space One (Iowa City, IA). Performed for the symposium “THERE IS A DEVIL INSIDE ME: works inspired by Ana Mendieta, presented on the 30th anniversary of her death.” I use a #2 pencil, string, sewing needles, and tattoo ink to permanently mark myself with an image of a piece she made while pursuing her MFA at the University of Iowa’s Intermedia Program. A live feed of the process was projected behind me.

THERE IS A DEVIL INSIDE ME, 2015, live performance, TRT: 46:20, Public Space One (Iowa City, IA).

THERE IS A DEVIL INSIDE ME (view from live feed), 2015, live performance, TRT: 46:20, Public Space One (Iowa City, IA).

Untitled (installation view), 2015, 10 stacks of 1,000 4 x 6” postcards, dimensions variable. Postcards printed with images taken by me on my iPhone on March 3-4, 2013, while trying to find my way back to my studio after having been unknowingly drugged at a concert on the UCSD campus. Latitude and longitude are printed on back. Arranged on floor in accordance with the location in which they were taken relative to each other.

Untitled (L: 32º 52’ 42.6” N, 117º 14’ 18.6” W; R: 32º 52’ 39” N, 117º 14’ 18.6” W), 2015, 10 stacks of 1,000 4 x 6” postcards, dimensions variable.

Untitled (L: 32º 52’ 39.6” N, 117º 14’ 18” W; R: 32º 52’ 42” N, 117º 14’ 18.6” W), 2015, 10 stacks of 1,000 4 x 6” postcards, dimensions variable.

Untitled (L: 32º 52’ 37.8” N, 117º 14’ 18.6” W; R: 32º 52’ 43.2” N, 117º 14’ 18.6” W), 2015, 10 stacks of 1,000 4 x 6” postcards, dimensions variable.

Untitled (map), 2015, approximately 4,250 ft. of red string, dimensions variable, UC San Diego Campus (La Jolla, CA). A red string unites the points I know I reached during the night of March 3-4, 2013. Information gathered from GPS locations of images taken that night.

Untitled (detail), 2015, approximately 4,250 ft. of red string, dimensions variable, UC San Diego Campus (La Jolla, CA).

Untitled (Rape Scene), 1974/2014, live performance, TRT: 47:30, VAF Commons Gallery, UC San Diego (La Jolla, CA). For the first in a series of re-performances, I re-performed Ana Mendieta's “Untitled (Rape Scene)” (1974), wherein the artist is in her apartment, motionless, and hogtied to her dining table, surrounded by blood and signs of a struggle. I re-created this scene in my studio, where I was living at the time.

Untitled (Rape Scene), 1974/2014, HD video documentation, TRT: 47:30, Color, Silent, TRT: 54:00. Video taken by a camera on my bookshelf during the re-performance of Untitled (Rape Scene).

Untitled (Rape Scene), 1974/2014, post-performance installation, mixed media, dimensions variable.

Lo Que Recuerdo, 2014, HD video, Color, Sound, TRT: 02:53. As a child, I took Folklorico lessons. La Negra was the first dance I learned. In this video, I perform all I can remember of that dance today.

Lo Que Recuerdo, 2014, live performance, TRT: 02:53, Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles, CA).

Artist Statement

My performance-based, interdisciplinary practice points to the ubiquity of structural violence on multiple scales and fronts, from the individual to the institution. Through durational re-performance and forensic re-construction of personal, historical, and cultural trauma I have experienced or been drawn to, I attempt to remember histories that are either ignored, actively erased, or can no longer be accessed. In doing so, I put the audience, site, and myself in conversation, addressing questions of complicity in the propagation – both active and passive – of violence against the Chicanx, female body.

Most recently, I have produced work based on three occurrences that cannot be remembered by those who experienced them: a night during which I was unwittingly drugged and subsequently became very lost at UC San Diego, my graduate school; and the deaths of Ana Mendieta and Claudia Alvarez, a Mexican housekeeper whose body was found by UCSD’s Birch Aquarium and whose death, despite occurring under suspicious circumstances, went underreported. I responded to my lost night by using data left on my cell phone to create pieces, all untitled, that approximate a narrative and spatial reconstruction of my movement. I similarly reconstructed the only detail of Alvarez’s last night of which I was certain by placing my body at the site of her death. Rather than visiting where she died, I have re-performed Mendieta’s work, embodying the continuation of the violence her work responded to and that has led to her institutional erasure.

Education
2016
Master of Arts, Department of Performance Studies, School of Communication, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)
2015
Master of Fine Arts, The Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego (La Jolla, CA)
2008
Bachelor of Fine Arts with minor in Anthropological Archaeology, Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (New York, NY)

Select Solo Exhibitions and Performances
2016
Ya Nos Cansamos. Performance in collaboration with Rebeca Hernandez, presented at Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Encuentro: eXcentrico (Santiago, Chile).
Embodying Erasure. Alvina Krause Studio, Northwestern University
2015
THERE IS A DEVIL INSIDE ME. Performance for THERE IS A DEVIL INSIDE ME: works inspired by Ana Mendieta, presented on the 30^th anniversary of her death. Public Space One (Iowa City, IA)
2015
Lo Que Recuerdo. Performance for 8 // MFA Graduate Exhibition 2015. University Art Gallery, UCSD.
Nothing We Haven’t Seen Before. Visual Arts Graduate Gallery, UCSD.
Smile Now, Cry Later. Performance for Cognitive Camouflage. A Ship in the Woods (Del Mar, CA)
2014
Are You Having Fun Yet? Well, I Guess We’ll See. Performance for You Can’t Choose Your Neighbors. SOMA (México, D.F.).
Are We Having Fun Yet? No, I Don’t Think So. Performance for SOMAWAX. Bikini Wax (México, D.F.)
Lo Que Recuerdo. Performance for Darin Klein & Friends Present: Mux Demux. Curated by Darin Klein. Commonwealth & Council (Los Angeles, CA).
Re-Performance #02: Cut Piece. Visual Arts Performance Space, UCSD.
Re-Performance #01: Untitled (Rape Scene). Pendergrast Gallery, UCSD
2013
My Darling, Sexy, Beautiful Tropicanita. Visual Arts Graduate Gallery, UCSD
I’ve Been Trying to Tell You. Pendergrast Gallery, UCSD
2010
An Exercise in the Impossible (After Manuel Arechiga). Elysian Park (Los Angeles, CA).
Tell Me Something No One Else Knows. The Strange (Los Angeles, CA).

Select Exhibitions and Performances
2016
Writing, Moving, and Dancing, workshop and performance led by Simone Forti. The GYM, Northwestern University
2015
Abramović Method Workshop and 3015, workshop and performance led by Marina Abramović in collaboration with Kim Stanley Robinson. University Art Gallery, UCSD
2014
Las Chicas Presents. 50 Taaffe Place (Brooklyn, NY).
Performance Art 101, workshop and performance led by Kembra Pfahler. SME Performance Space, UCSD
2013
Greater Los Angeles Master of Fine Arts. California State University, Long Beach (Long Beach, CA).
2012
Speculation & Spectacle. Curated by Lisbeth Murray. Rogue Video and Performance Festival (Brooklyn, NY).

Select Publications
2017
Pending article on Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas in Mexico. Ana Mendieta, special issue of The Iowa Review. Iowa City: University of Iowa.
2015
“Are We Having Fun Yet? No, I Don’t Think So.” Emergency INDEX: An Annual Document of Performance Practice, Vol. 4. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Ducking Presse.
2014
Sensitive Boys Special Summer Issue: In Living Color. Edited and produced in collaboration with Melinda Guillen. Light and Wire Gallery, Summer 2014. (Online).
“My Darling, Sexy, Beautiful Tropicanita.” Issue 3: Topologies of the Underground: Metaphors, Extensions & Speculations, UnWeave Research Notebook, published by the Discursive & Curatorial Productions Initiative. UCSD.
2013
“My Darling, Beautiful, Sexy Tropicanita.” Issue Nine: Reclaim (the millennial) Generation. RECAPS MAGAZINE, October 7 2013. (Online).
2012
“An Exercise in the Impossible (After Manuel Arechiga),” Issue Three: (Re)writing the Road. RECAPS MAGAZINE, August 13 2012. (Online).

Residencies & Awards
2016
Conference Travel Grant, The Graduate School, Northwestern University.
Graduate Student International Conference Travel Grant, The Buffett Institute, Northwestern University
2015
The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Major Grant
2014
Soma Summer (México, D.F.)
2010
Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts (Salzburg, Austria).
Society of Friends of the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Grant.

Public Talks and Presentations
2016
Panel Member, “Researching Ana Mendieta” Witching Hour Festival (Iowa City IA).
Participant in “Inverting and Perverting Futures” working group, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Encuentro: eXcentrico (Santiago, Chile).
“Re-performing Mendieta.” Guest Lecturer, “21st Century Trans Feminism: Transgender, Transnational, and Transgenerational.” Professor Andrea Fontenot, School of Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA).
2015
“Nothing We Haven’t Seen Before.” Presenter, “Soldadera: Absorbing, Transforming Violence In and Through Our Work.” Organized by Jennifer Doyle for Nao Bustamante’s Soldadera. Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA).
“Nothing We Haven’t Seen Before.” Presenter, “analog dissident.” Organized by Jimena Sarno (Los Angeles, CA)
2014
Presenter, “You Gotta See It To Be It” Lecture Series Organized by Mario Ybarra, Jr. Slanguage Studio/Third World Productions (Long Beach, CA).
“My Darling, Sexy, Beautiful Tropicanita.” Guest Lecturer, “COGR 275: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology.” Professors Lisa Cartwright and Elizabeth Losh, School of Communications, UCSD
2013
Participant in “Mediated Public Spaces, Embodiment and Virtual Communities” working group. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Graduate Student Initiative Convergence, University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA).