Raramujer

“Raramujer,” from the Spanish rara (rare/strange) and mujer (woman) represents me: an urban Indigenous woman who works with oral history and ritual, to share her worldview across Los Angeles. In this role I connect to my Raramuri (Tarahumara) roots, wearing the traditional clothing from my ancestry, and honoring my heritage and living culture. My goal in this social practice performance piece is to highlight the inequalities in the treatment of Indigenous women and to spark dialogues around assimilation and decolonization.  

The performance intervention gets off the stage, outside the gallery, and into the streets. Raramujer serves as a messenger of politics and peace who reappropriates public space in marches and community corners while riding a bike, and sharing Xicana feminist political, spiritual, and cultural poetry, song, and floetry. Raramujer interweaves performance, protest, and prayer with guerrilla interventions to embody themes of mobility, message, and spirit.

A pivotal activation of “Raramujer” took place on Indigenous People’s Day at LACMA’s Olmec exhibit. Contemporary Chicanx culture bearers consider these Olmec heads as our ancestors and a part of our cultural history. The intervention included Indigenous drumming, song, dance, and live poetry, as well as projections of video and images based on Indigenous philosophy and resistance onto LACMA’s walls, a “hi-AzTECH” echo of the Chicano art and performance group ASCO’s “Spray Paint LACMA” intervention in 1972. This activation was both a welcoming ceremony and a protest, a proclamation that we are here, not just in stone, not just in ancient history, but alive and making art and contemporary cultural history in California.

My work in combining performance with mobility, wellness, and spirit, pushes conventional categories and expectations, opening avenues for new forms, terms, methods, and practices in the social practice genre.