Chelsea Factory Presents Resident Artist Yara Travieso's ANTOLOGÍA: Una Teta Novela

Chelsea Factory has announced 2023 Resident Artist Yara Travieso will present a limited seating, work-in-process showing of ANTOLOGÍA: Una Teta Novela (ANTHOLOGY: A Titty-Novela) at Chelsea Factory from June 20-22, 2024.

From Cuban-Venezuelan-American anti-disciplinary artist and community collaborator Travieso, ANTOLOGÍA: Una Teta Novela is an embodied psycho-ritual-performance and installation of one titty's living process moving from a state of unbearable separation to an interconnected surrender. Rooted in the mad, the absurd, and the sacred, ANTOLOGÍA fosters a terrain of story-listening, instead of story-telling, prioritizing living embodied truths over imposed colonial narratives. This work was created through an embodied practice of listening to Travieso's Venezuelan matrilineal line. Described as an inside-out-and evolving-process that rips out the internalized weeds that persist in suffocating Travieso's body from her feeling self, from land, and from each other.

Yara Travieso was a member of Chelsea Factory's 2023 Resident Artist cohort. Throughout the year, Travieso used Chelsea Factory's space to create, experiment, and rehearse ANTOLOGÍA. Describing the piece's evolution, Travieso says, "ANTOLOGÍA marks my return to public-facing art practice since my 2018 premiere Sagittarius A. A hiatus that was mandated by caregiving for my chronically ill immigrant parents, involvement in community organizing, burnout from the expectations of labor from art institutions, and grappling with a lifetime of suffocating anxiety that led me to question my own life. Addressing mental health isn't easy for me to discuss, yet, in these terrifying times, it's imperative to share narratives of healing spiritual and bodily disconnect induced by the scarcity of individual and collective care and the poison of colonial separation, both physical and psychological."

ANTOLOGÍA lives in the legacy of Latin American art and spirituality by women and queer people that is rooted in the resistance of the regulated body/land. The work is bilingual (English/Spanish) and the entire creative team is entirely made up of Caribbean women/queer artists. It incorporates Música Llanera, a musical style from Venezuela that Travieso grew up listening to and dancing to. Traditionally, this music was sung by farmers in the countryside to connect with the land and to soothe cattle during milking. During Travieso's performance, this music will be performed by the legendary Venezuelan musicians Yva Las Vegass and Venezuelan-American singer songwriter Miriam Elhalji.

On the decision to return to public performance at Chelsea Factory, Travieso remarks, "Before Chelsea Factory approached me for a residency, I had taken time away from creating my art within American art institutions due to their inauthentic commodification of a living process. This opportunity was the only way I could return to public-facing performance. Working with a team that prioritizes process and genuinely respects both the artists they work with and their own roles as true culture bearers has been a true gift."

The following is a complete schedule of performances:

Thursday, June 20 at 7:30PM

Friday, June 21 at 7:30PM

Saturday, June 22 at 7:30PM

Approximately 90-minute runtime

Tickets $20-40

Tickets available at: chelseafactory.org/yaratravieso-antologia

About Yara Travieso

Yara Travieso is a Cuban-Venezuelan-American anti-disciplinary artist & community collaborator working in performance, film, dance, installation & ritual. She is a 2023/24 Resident Artist with NYC's Chelsea Factory, a NYSCA Film & Media grant recipient, a United States Artist Fellow, a Creative Capital recipient, and a winner of NALAC Grant via The Ford Foundation. She is currently on faculty at her alma mater (BFA 09'), The Juilliard School (recipient of the 2023 John Erskine Faculty Prize). Her productions have been featured in NYC's Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center, Performance Space NY, The Public Theater, The Knockdown Center, The High Line, Opéra National de Lorraine France, New World Symphony Center, & EMPAC among others. Her film work has been presented with Film at Lincoln Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, PBS, SXSW, NY Latino Film Festival, El Museo, Museum of The Moving Image among others. In 2022 she created ¡EPA! A community performance that raised over $10K and 300 coats for NYC Asylum Seekers. In 2019 she collaborated with The Women's March and Chilean Feminist collective, LASTESIS to lead a performance protest of 25k women. Travieso co-founded the Borscht Film Festival in 2005 and co-ran it until 2010 when it was named "the weirdest film festival on the planet" by IndieWire. She has led talks and lectures with: The Ford Foundation, The Park Avenue Armory, MoMa, BAM, NYU, National YoungArts Foundation ('05 alum), Fordham, The New School, UnionDocs, and Ghetto Film School, among others. She is the recipient of residencies such as: EMPAC, PS122 RAMP, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, BRICLab, STREB, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and The Bessie Schonberg AIR, among others.

About Chelsea Factory

Chelsea Factory exists to provide responsive partnership to NYC-based artists from historically excluded communities. Launched as a pop-up initiative in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Chelsea Factory has quickly become an essential resource for artists across all creative disciplines. We provide a range of support customized to our partners, including subsidized rehearsal and performance space, production support and mentorship, and free community programming. In today's rapidly changing world, we are committed to invigorating an inclusive and sustainable arts sector that long outlasts Chelsea Factory's physical infrastructure.