In 1991, Guillermo Gómez-Peña became the first Chicano artist to receive a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
In 1995, he was included in The UTNE Reader’s "List of 100 Visionaries." In 1997 he received the American Book Award for The New World Border. And in 2000, he received the Cineaste lifetime achievement award from the Taos Talking Pictures film festival.
On Thursday, November 6, Gómez-Peña comes to UC Santa Cruz for a special live performance titled Imaginary Activism: The Role of the Artist Beyond the Art World.
The event begins at 8 p.m. at the Digital Arts Research Center (Room 108).
Admission is free, and seating is limited.
Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, and director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Born and raised in Mexico City, Gómez-Peña came to the U.S. in 1978.
His work includes performance audio, installations, poetry, and journalism--exploring cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, “extreme culture,” and new technologies. Critics have described his multi-centric narratives and border projects as "Chicano cyber-punk performances," and "ethno-techno art."
A regular contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Gómez-Peña is also a writer for newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe, and is a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT).
Gómez-Peña’s performance work and 10 books have contributed to debates on cultural diversity, border culture, and U.S.-Mexico relations for nearly three decades. His art work has been presented at more than 800 venues across the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Russia, South Africa and Australia.
As Gómez-Peña once told Art Practical, an online magazine that covers contemporary art and visual culture in the San Francisco Bay area: “I believe in the sophistication of the human condition. I believe that performance art is such a visceral art form that it allows for multiple points of entry—some are intellectual, but some are spiritual or emotional.”
For more information about the performance, contact the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz, (831) 459-4731.
