La Vedette De America (Tu Boquita with Contrapposto), 2012 from Sofía Córdova on Vimeo.
As part of SFMOMA's Here, There, Elsewhere show, the Cali, Colombia based performance group Helena Producciones invited 5 Bay Area artists to create new performance works over 4 days at Galería De La Raza.
The performance La Vedette De America (Tu Boquita With Contrapposto) was created in response to the expectation that artists of color make art solely about the experience of the "marginalized other". The dance and lip sync, which are done to Iris Chacón's Tu Boquita, an allusion to histories of Caribbean performativity in itself, are done over an 8 minute segment throughout which the audio begins to degrade as do I, literally demonstrating the grating exhaustion of 'performing the other'.
In addition, the piece makes direct reference to the history of performance by way of Bruce Nauman, using his uniform of white shirt and black pants in an attempts to draw further attention to how Nauman's whiteness and maleness allowed him to create his suite of performances without 'perceived' cultural adornment (real or symbolic) or transparent 'intention' in a way that artists of color find near impossible.