ITINERANT, New York City’s annual Performance Art Festival, continues with its 2017 program at the Queens Museum on Saturday, May 20th, 2 PM. The festival (May 13th to May 21st) has been presenting performances and public interventions in different venues in the city: Last Frontier NYC, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Grace Exhibition Space, and Panoply Performance Laboratory. The closing event is scheduled for Sunday, May 21st at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in front of the Queens Museum.

This year’s program, organized and curated independently by interdisciplinary artist Hector Canonge, focuses on works that treat notions of human displacement, pilgrimage, physical dislocations, psychological migrations, and corporeal transformations. ITINERANT 2017 will feature performance art works by local, national and international artists coming from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North America.

The festival’s OPENING NIGHT (Saturday, May 13th, 8:00-11:00 pm) will be hosted at Last Frontier NYC in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The CLOSING EVENT (Sunday, May 21st, 2:00 – 7:00 pm) will take place with outdoor performances and interventions at Flushing Meadows Park in Corona, Queens.

ITINERANT 2017 will be hosted at the following venues and boroughs: Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, May 14th, 3-8 pm), Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx, May 15th, 7-10 pm), Panoply Performance Laboratory (Brooklyn, May 16th, 8-11pm), Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn, May 19th, 7-11pm), and Queens Museum (Queens, May 20th, 2-5 pm).

Participating Artists:

Milton Afanador Alvarado (Colombia), Qinza Najm (Pakistan), Jil Guyon (United States), Mina Büker and Amy Wilson (Turkey / United States), Jessica Hirst (United States), Tsedaye Makonnen (Ethiopia), Jenna Kline (United States), Tianyu Qiu (China), Alexander D’Agostino (United States), and Jenna Kline (United States).

Milton Afanador Alvarado (Colombia) – En Tránsito

Milton Afanador Alvarado was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia. He holds a Masters or Fine Arts from Universidad Industrial de Santander. His thesis, 100% American was nominated and won the De Greiff Otto Award for best project. In 2006, he participated in the 40 National Salon of Artists and in the 11th Regional Lounge in preparation for a scholarship in Mexico. Motivated by this experience, he did studies in Media and Technologies in Argentina. As member of the collective “Por Ahora,” he organized programs and exhibitions in Santander, Colombia. In 2012, he joined the collective “SEU2,” and received a grant to travel to the festival of performance art Zone-action”in Argentina. He received the grant from the Departmental Program for Artistic in Santander and participated in the “Festepe”, Festival of theater and performance of Chancay- Peru (2013). He took part in the “Atos em ações International Festival of Performance and INTERVENÇÕES”, Brazil, 2013 and in “EPI, International Performance Independent”, Chile. In 2016, he participated in the “II Biennale of Arts of Bucaramanga.” The same year he began to serve as university chair. In 2017 he was selected as a fellow by the South Goethe Institute, International Academy of Performing Arts.

Qinza Najm (Pakistan) – Tabdeeli

Qinza Najm is an American-Pakistani artist whose work has been selected for many national and international juried exhibitions. Currently Najm’s large-scale work is held in several prestigious public and private art collections. She has exhibited at Miami Art Basel, Sikka Art Dubai, Dumbo Art Fair, Governors Island Art Fair, Times Square, Aicon Gallery and is currently exhibiting works at Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Najm completed her psychology Ph.D. in the United States, which enables her to explore her subconscious and bring it onto canvas and performance. She pursued her fine arts studies at Bath University, the Savannah School of Art & Design, and The Art Students League of New York, where she studied with well known artists. Qinza’s art navigates around her personal experiences and her take on gender issues, islamophobia, spirituality, transformation, displacement and roles of women in the 21st century. Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, NY Daily News, International Business News and ArtNet News.

Jil Guyon (United States) – Widow

Jil Guyon is an award winning visual and performing artist based in New York. Her performance-videos have been screened at Lincoln Center’s “Dance on Camera” Festival, “Cinedanse Quebec,” “Fashion Art Toronto,” “Women and Fashion FilmFEST” (Best Experimental Film), Symphony Space, and “San Francisco Dance Film Festival,” among others. As part of the “Toronto Urban Film Festival” curated by Guy Maddin, her performance-video, “Widow,” was seen throughout the Toronto mass transit system, averaging over 2 million riders/viewers per day. She has also performed alongside Kiki Smith and Alvin Curran in Joan Jonas’s “Variations on a Scene” at “The Wave Hill Dancescape” in Riverdale, NY. Guyon’s critically acclaimed multimedia theater piece, “At the Borders of Eternity,” based on “The Diary of Anne Frank,” starred celebrated German actress Elfriede Irrall and was featured on ORF television (Austria). It is currently part of the collection of the Kulturarchiv in Vienna and was the first theatrical work granted exclusive use of the diary. Jil Guyon is a Lumiere prize (Canada) nominee, and a recipient of the IndieFEST, Global Shorts and Accolade Awards for Excellence in experimental film, as well the Magistrat der Stadt Wien Award (Austria), and a Harriet E. Eagleston Fellowship.

Mina Büker and Amy Wilson (Turkey / United States) – Plugged

Amy Wilson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Born in Boston Massachusetts, Wilson spent much of her time painting mythological creatures and angels. Being exposed to a number of devoted Catholics while growing up, Wilson became fascinated with the idea of religion and how it functions in society. Moving to Chicago in 2015, she has expanded her practice into fiber art, fashion, video, installation, and performance in particular. Through these mediums, She combines autobiography and personal mythology with themes of connection, spirituality, and the human disregard to life. While performing, Wilson aims to conduce an introspective environment through engagement with ritualistic activity and terrestrial materials.

Mina Buker was born in Istanbul, Turkey in January 15, 1997. Here, she developed her skills for painting and sculpture, incorporating found objects and organic materials. In 2015 Buker moved to the U.S. after earning a Merit scholarship to receive her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Buker primarily works in painting, performance and sculpture. She uses these mediums for their willingness to be navigated by and capture every moment of making. By using natural materials, repetitive and meditative movements she focuses on how everything is made by repetition but each part is naturally doomed to be unique; even they act same. While she draws inspiration from her cultural background and worldwide political tensions, Buker explores how meditation and art can be a way of release when it comes to dealing with fear; either caused by politic instability or the future of humanity. Her first two years living in the States, Buker has been progressively involved in Chicago’s performance art scene. She has been performing as part of “The (((WAVER)) Project” sponsored by HLC in Mana Contemporary Chicago since 9 months, performed in Dfbl8tr Performance Art Gallery, No Nation Gallery and Mana Contemporary Chicago. She has performed her solo piece “The Burial of Heroism” as part of the 2016 residency of ‘Industry of The Ordinary’. Recently she performed with Artist Group ‘Non-Grata’ at the Dfbl8tr Gallery. Buker hopes to keep creating work to evoke unity, spirituality and action for a change in societies.

Jessica Hirst (United States) – Intervention

Jessica Hirst is a multi-disciplinary artist from the United States, although for the past ten years she was living abroad in Nicaragua, Spain and the Dominican Republic. She creates performances, dances, installations, videos, collages, sculptures and paintings. Her work often uses her own life and experiences as a point of departure to address universal themes, often about mental health, addiction, colonialism, and the environment. Jessica did not intend to be an artist; rather, art came and took her when she felt she could not go on living. Her career began in climate change policy in the Clinton-Gore Administration, and moved into clinical community counseling, and both of these fields inform her art practice. Jessica has performed in France, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, India, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the United States and Chile. Jessica has had four solo exhibitions and numerous collective exhibitions. She has curated the Independence.DOM performance festival and the exhibition “Zimbabwe” of Eliu Almonte, both in the Dominican Republic. She has studied art at Metafora in Barcelona, performance with Valentin Torrens, and dance with Celeste Miller, Ed Tyler, and Rennie Harris. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Public Practice at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

Tsedaye Makonnen (Ethiopia) – The Last Moment II

Tsedaye Makonnen is an Ethiopian-American interdisciplinary artist and a mother. Recurring themes present in her work are identity, migration, colorism, womanhood, ritual and kinship. She’s drawn to conveying the African Diaspora’s creative responses to assimilating, destroying and recreating the Self within new territories. As of late, she has been connecting the forced migrations taking place in U.S. cities and abroad through performance art, sculpture and installations. Tsedaye has performed in D.C. at the Corcoran Gallery, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. In 2016, she completed a four month residency at 39th Street Gallery in the Gateway Arts District. A part of New York’s performance art scene, she has shown at Five Myles Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Grace Exhibition Space, Panoply Performance Lab, ABCNoRio, and more. She recently performed a piece on her father’s migration to the U.S. as a refugee at Pratt Film Institute. She is involved in a touring performance art collective titled BlackGirlLit: Between Literature, Performance & Memory. In 2017, a screening of BlackGirlLit’s film tookplace at MoCADA during 3DotZine’s fest. She had two collaborative video performances with Helina Metaferia on gentrification in D.C. showing at Museum of African Diaspora, a part of Helina’s solo exhibition Home | Free. Tsedaye also had a solo video installation at Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on the exportation of skin-bleaching.

Jenna Kline (United States) – Cottage Cheese

Jenna Kline’s most important tool is her body. Nightmares, memories and heartbreak fuel her work. Her body is a sculpture, storyteller, and most importantly, an instrument to connect with her audience. The performances are an outlet to create an expression of raw emotion. She enters adorned with a full face of makeup including bright red lipstick, high heels and lacy bras to achieve a hyper- feminine persona. As she performs, the lipstick smears and the delicate undergarments collect the dirt from the floor – viscera are added – cow hearts, pig intestines and slabs of sirloin steak – and what began as a dance recital has become a grotesque, uncoordinated display. She imposes impossible tasks and challenges to overcome and a struggle ensues. The restraints are physical, mental and She sings songs well beyond her ability and dances spastically for long periods of time until she reaches her physical and emotional limits. The result is often slapstick in nature with a dark, gory undercurrent. The goal is to achieve emotional enlightenment. Once she reaches this state, she is her most genuine, transparent and true self. Wearing her heart on her sleeve for all to see. Exhausted and sweating and she has transcended her body and has become a sweaty, fleshy creature. The air is left with lingering aroma of copper, fried foods and hand sanitizer.

Tianyu Qiu (China) – Game I

Tianyu Qiu, a Chinese born American artist, currently living and working in New York City. As a voyager walking on the brink of precipice, His performative acts and installations creates situations and conditions, which involves with public relationship and social engagement with different communities, and raise questions to provoke political repression and elevate himself to the sublime of relativity. The combination of the extreme differences of the East and the West become the core conflict throughout his practice, which is also a reflection on the current state of the two worlds. His projects do not only exist in the white cubes and theater stages, but also architecture spaces, and other public spectrums, where to evoke the possibilities to encounter with the others (viewers, spectators, audiences, and etc), and to form critical and transitory dialogue over the project, the place, the time, and the people. Tianyu has also worked as a director, scenographer, and prop designer on many theater, musical, opera and film productions across the United States. Some important production organizations and companies include, Citadel Theater, Eta Creative Arts Foundation, Northwestern University School of Opera, Ash Lawn Opera Foundation in Virginia, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and etc. Tianyu received his BFA degree in Theater from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons the New School.

Alexander D’Agostino (United States) – What Does It Mean When You Do That

Alexander D’Agostino is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, and arts organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009 with a BFA in painting. He investigates the queer and otherworldly through dance, ritual, teaching, installation and performance art. Alexander has developed and co-curated Queer Pulse: an annual review of queer performance art,teaches dance and movement research, and develops new performances with his collaborator Noelle Tolbert. His own work has been presented at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, the Center for Contemporary Art in Afghanistan in Kabul, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Chashama’s Summer performance series in Manhattan, Panoply Performance Laboratory and Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, Performance Art Fest 15 and 16’ in Pittsburgh, Akimbo a site specific dance festival in Baltimore, Philadelphia Free Form Festival, Art in Odd Places Performance Art Festival in Orlando, and most recently as a featured artist for Lab Bodies exhibition “Light Happenings 2” as part Light City Festival in Baltimore.

About the festival:
ITINERANT was created in 2010 by artist Hector Canonge. The initiative was a small platform for Contemporary Performance Art, and had its origins in the monthly series A-Lab Forum that Canonge organized at Crossing Art Gallery in Flushing, Queens. Following the growing interest in Live Art, and the need to present performance in the borough, ITINERANT was launched in 2011 under the auspices of QMAD, Queens Media Arts Development. In 2012, ITINERANT was recognized by the City of New York as the first Performance Art festival taking place in the five boroughs (Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island) that make the metropolitan region. Following the large scale venture in NYC, Canonge journeyed through Europe and Latin America creating, in 2013, the Spanish edition of the festival and calling it Encuentro ITINERANTe with public presentations in various cities in the Southern Hemisphere.

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