Queer New York International Arts Festival: Wagner Schwartz
Company:
NYU Skirball
NYU Skirball presents the Queer New York International Arts Festival, featuring works from a diverse group of international artists, running February 7-17, 2024, at NYU Skirball. The festival, returning to New York after a six-year hiatus, questions traditional definitions and the understanding of queerness in artistic practice in concept and/or form. The 2024 festival features artists from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany whose works explore a range of contemporary issues related to queer identity and marginalization, opening up topics such as sex work, migration, Indigenous rights, political prosecution, and the new conservatism. QNYIAF, curated and produced by Zvonimir Dobrović (founder and artistic director of Queer Zagreb and Perforations festivals in Croatia), will include performances, a video installation/exhibition, and a series of public talks with artists and curators.
Wagner Schwartz (Brazil)
La Bête
Performance/Lecture
Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz performs an interactive and participatory solo, in which he is reactivating the famous figure of the Bicho (or “Beast”), the adjustable metal sculpture which the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark produced as a series in the early 1960s. The performer begins by manipulating a plastic replica of the original object, and playing with its system of hinges, before inviting the audience to do likewise, this time with a different kind of beast: his own naked body. Schwartz’s performance of La Bête in 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, when a video of the naked artist being touched by a young child was shared online, incited an extensive hate campaign targeting the artist, the museum, and cultural workers.
Note: Based on his experience with La Bête, Schwartz wrote a book “A nudez da cópia imperfeita” (“The Nakedness of the Imperfect Copy”), Editora Nós, which will be discussed, along with the wider context of his artistic practice, on Thursday, February 15 at 5:30 pm in the Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts at the Richard Schechner Studio (721 Broadway, 6th Floor) with Professor André Lepecki.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1972, Wagner Schwartz lives and works between São Paulo and Paris. After studying modern literature, he participated in several groups of choreographic research and experimentation in South America and Europe. He has created 12 pieces since 2003, for which he has been awarded several prizes. In 2021, he became resident at the Cité International des Arts, winner of the program established by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. In 2022, he was invited by ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network) to participate at a PEN International residency in Antwerp (PEN Vlaanderen)—supported also by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. In 2023, he was supported by PEN America's Artist at Risk Connection.
Tickets start at $25, and can be purchased online, by visiting the box office in person, Tuesday – Saturday from 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm, or by calling 212.998.4941.
