Artist’s 1st Live Show Shares Personal Stories of Colonization of the Pacific
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The Mistake Room is pleased to present Tulu, Tatlo, III—the first live performance work by diasporic indigenous Chamorro artist Gisela McDaniel.
Chamorros are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, with the majority of them living on Guam.
Taking her monumental mixed media mural installation on TMR’s facade — Sakkan Eku LA — as a point of departure, McDaniel’s performance aims to expand the process, visual and sonic languages, and object-viewer relationship of her paintings to the realm of embodied experience. The performance centers around McDaniel and her collaborators Morgan Hutson and Lancer Casem who are all subjects depicted in the large scale paintings on the facade mural. Wearing costumes that McDaniel created from materials that nod to both the personal stories of the performers and histories of colonization in the Pacific and beyond, the performers stand in pools of green sand alongside newly commissioned anthropomorphic resin sculptures that gesture to the presence of other-than-human beings. As the performers begin to move in front of the mural, a new video work is projected onto it—creating layers that connect historical film footage of American expansionism to a soundscape that overlaps the stories of trauma, strength, and perseverance of the performers.
Above: Study for Tulu, Tatlo, III. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo Credit: Megan McIsaac.
What emerges is a happening that resembles an encounter with one of McDaniel’s paintings that usually feature a motion-sensor activated sound element that triggers the painted subjects to speak to their viewers. In this context, the storytelling moment is broadened as the voices of the performers share individual narratives that converse with the projected collaged images— revealing the complex ways that charged colonial pasts evolve and manifest in the present. As images continue to shift and layer to the rhythm of the soundscape, methods of camouflage—historically wedded to militarization—are mobilized for different purposes. Here, camouflage becomes a survival tactic—a means to protect elements of our personhood and culture for future generations. As the interplay between the seen and unseen and what is told and kept secret unfolds throughout the performance, an acknowledgement of the palimpsest nature of memory crystalizes—reminding us of its importance in understanding the worldviews and circumstances of communities consistently re-shaped by both struggle and survival.
The first live performance work by diasporic indigenous Chamorro artist Gisela McDaniel takes her monumental mixed media mural installation on TMR’s facade — Sakkan Eku LA — as a point of departure. McDaniel’s performance aims to expand the process, visual and sonic languages, and object-viewer relationship of her paintings to the realm of embodied experience. The performance centers around McDaniel and her collaborators Morgan Hutson and Lancer Casem who are all subjects depicted in the large scale paintings on the facade mural. As the performers begin to move in front of the mural, a new video work is projected onto it, creating layers that connect historical film footage of American expansionism to a soundscape that overlaps the stories of trauma, strength, and perseverance of the performers. 1811 E. 20th St., downtown; Sunday, May 22, 8pm; free; tmr.la.
McDaniel is a diasporic, indigenous Chamorro artist. Her work is based in healing from her own sexual trauma and reflecting the healing of womxn and non- binary people who have survived sexual trauma. Interweaving assemblages of audio, oil painting, and motion-sensored technology, she creates pieces that “come to life” and literally “talk back” to the viewer upon being triggered by observers. She intentionally incorporates survivor’s voices in order to subvert traditional power relations and to enable both individual and collective healing. Working primarily with women who identify as indigenous, multiracial, immigrant, and of color, her work deliberately disrupts and responds to historical and contemporary patterns of censorship as it relates to the display and exhibition of women and femme identifying people’s bodies, voices, and stories. She aims to heal those who have experienced gender-based sexual violence, giving a voice, space, as well as a confidential vehicle for survivors to not only share their experiences, but to also explore how those experiences have affected them long- term. McDaniel received her BFA from the University of Michigan in 2019. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Dual Duality, MOCAD, Detroit (2020); Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2020); Lush P(r)ose, Playground Detroit, Detroit (2019); Virago, Detroit Art Babes Collective, Detroit (2019) and Theotokos: New Visions of the Mother God, The Schvitz, Detroit (2018).
The Mistake Room (TMR) is an independent non-profit space and global-reaching platform for art, culture, and ideas. We transform how art and other forms of creative expression are made; broaden who gets to make and experience them; and re-imagine where and how we encounter them. We believe that mistakes disrupt the way things are and that the discomforts they cause show us new ways of existing in the world. That is why our work challenges what we have come to expect from encounters with and in spaces like ours. What drives us is a deep commitment to making the arts more equitable, so that meaningful and dignified participation is possible for others like us and the ones that will come after.
