The artist, collaborating with Fernando López, unveils her proposal on Tuesday at 6 p.m., with free entrance
An exhibition of Acerina Amador’s artist residency Anacaona, is to be shown in the Auditorio de Tenerife’s La Salita hall on Tuesday, September 16. The Canarian creator has been working with Fernando López since September 3 on the project, which explores the relationships among gender, work and racialisation through salsa music, movement and texts. Entry is free until the total capacity is reached.
The premise of the project is how music and dance can go beyond their festive functions for use in the past and present as tools of resistance to the oppression of a capitalist regime marked by psychological terror, corporal discipline and internalisation of shame.
The piece aims to generate a scenic space that, through salsa songs, invites to challenge capitalism as a modern colonial construct, involving not only a hierarchical division between men and women but also a profound division between the human (white men and women) and the non-human (racialised men and women and non-human animals).
Still in the creative stage, the work is based on the historic figure of Anacaona, the Taíno ruler who Spanish invaders murdered for refusing to acquiesce to their wishes. As a result, she became a symbol of resistance, initially in the speeches of those advocating Cuban independence from Spain and subsequently as an icon of female empowerment that reconnected with the cultural roots of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America.
In this sense, the work explores issues associated with colonialism, the raciality of bodies and the exploitation of the female body, as well as establishing a nexus with the history of the Canary Islands. With this perspective, Anacaona invites spectators to re-examine the colonial history of the Canary Islands from a critical and contemporary point of view.
This activity is part of the Auditorio de Tenerife’s focus on the development of artists, new creations and, in particular, artistic processes. Creation takes time, space and resources, and the Auditorio de Tenerife provides these elements in its programme of artist residencies, which is chiefly focussed on performing artists and music.