HER - an urban action by | Doris Difarnecio and Priyanka Choudhary

Presented by FICA and ArteAcción

Thursday May 28 - 5:30 pm
PVR Saket, New Delhi

This urban action/intervention is conceived as a universal demand for justice and respect for life and equality.  Created as a site of possibility to move the acts of violence against women from the invisible to the visible, from silence to vocal actions of resistance against a collective amnesia. The ritual seeks to activate memory and life into spaces which have become blind spots, ornamented and forgotten monuments.

Doris Difarnecio is a theatre director - intellectual - political activist who lives in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, México, where she directed the Centro Hemisférico (a satélite of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in the Americas of the New York University)  between 2007-2013 and FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya- Strength of the Mayan Woman) between 1999 and 2013. She studied her BA in literature and theatre at the Skidmore College en Nueva York and has recently finished her MPhil on Social Sciences and Humanities in the CESMECA (Center for Higher Research in Mexico and Central America), focusing her theses in the body and memory of popular theatre of the Mayan Women of FOMMA, this as a tool of self determination and resistance from a postcolonial perspective. (http://fomma-chiapas.org/teatro)  As a teacher she is focused in creating intersections between the performativity of oral history and the de-colonial thought to create reflexions, dialogues, dramatizations, public interventions, etc. created and thought by the students in relationship with the spaces in their communities.

Priyanka Choudhary did her BFA from College of Art, New Delhi, India. Her visual vocabulary traces its antecedents to Arte-Povera and Minimalism among other contemporary art movements. In 2010, her first solo show NUL to Now was curated by Abhay Maskara and held at Gallery Maskara, Mumbai. In 2011, Choudhary’s works were featured at the India Art Summit, New Delhi, and Galerie du Jour, Paris. In the same year, her second solo show Tetanus Midas was exhibited at Gallery Maskara. In 2012 and 2013 her works were featured in group exhibitions at the India Art Fair, New Delhi by Gallery Maskara. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the SKODA Art Prize 2012 in India and participated in the group show at the NGMA (National Gallery of Modern Art Delhi) for the same event. In 2014 she did a residency and a solo show SI in YAM Gallery in Mexico. Her last solo show 1914 - 2014 was held at Maskara Gallery in January-February, 2014. She has been practicing performance and urban interventions in countries such as Mexico, South Africa, United States, Belgium and her native India. The artist lives and works in New Delhi, India.