KDR

KDR is excited to announce “Tierra Retumbante” (Rumbling Earth), a solo exhibition by performance artist and activist ELYLA, marking their first exhibition in the US. The opening reception is on December 1st, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The exhibition will be on view through January 11th, 2025.

For over a decade, ELYLA has critically examined the myth of the “Nicaragua Mestiza,” a supposed homogeneous national identity that erases multicultural differences and shapes the self-perception of dominant populations in Central and Pacific Nicaragua. Their exploration goes beyond academic debates, posing questions like, “What does it mean to be mestizx? Can I feel mestizaje in my body? “What stories exist within our family lineages when we start calling ourselves as ‘mestizxs’? Through this personal inquiry, ELYLA unravels collective memories, revalidates dissident subjectivities, and redefines the body as a dynamic space of identity.

In the video installation, “Tierra Retumbante,” ELYLA draws on the poetic egregore of The Masaya Volcano or Popogatepe, a Manque term meaning “mountain that burns,” a powerful symbol of the land and spirit from pre-Hispanic and colonial times. Located in the heart of the Pacific Ring of Fire, it is a place where volcanoes ignite their underground incandescence, and the living cultures of the continent connect with that seething, flowing lava. Vertigo and dance, past and present, abyss and flight, all fuse through this corporeality that chooses dissent while honoring ancestral heritage. Elyla achieves this by addressing the 16th-century folkloric theatrical masterpiece of “El Güegüense,” re-designing “Güegüense” costumes informed by the history of LGBTQ rights in Nicaragua crafted in collaboration with the Navajo artist and biologist Sierra Pete.

The exhibit also displays traditional “Caites” (Nicaraguan sandals) that transform into high heels, handcrafted with leather, clay, charcoal, and other materials. They act as unique offerings to protective entities or deities within the intimate pantheon of the artist’s reclaimed Cochón worldview. (Cochón is a derogatory term used to refer to homoerotic practices in Nicaragua since colonial invasion until today. Here, it is reclaimed to dignify the expression of non-heteronormative sexuality.) In one piece, the duality of corn husk and flower reveals to spectators a symbolic strength inherent in dissident bodies: the ground is touched with the ball of the foot, while the heel rises toward the sky. These platform shoes, “Caites,” suggest the integration of polarities, a “cuape” (double soul), or the dual feminine-masculine spirit, which has references in many Indigenous territories of Abya Yala.

Mourning and liberation from the nationalist “mestizo” mandate, “Tierra Retumbante” is a bold exhibit synthesizing the closure and farewell of a journey that channeled anti colonial critique of Mestizaje toward a trans-coloniality, or even more, toward a trans-history with interstices of belonging for divergent identities. ELYLA invites us to rethink human diversity and belonging by reclaiming “the strange” through natural elements and ritual gestures. Rooted in their Chontaleño heritage, they challenge fixed identities and embrace the complexities of the “other.” In a time when the world is rethinking power and normality, her practice reminds us that transformation begins with our roots, in the dance between memory and territory, where new strategies of belonging and Earth stewardship can emerge.
—Ezequiel D’León Masís, Nicaragua