LA POCHA NOSTRA
2857 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
pocha@pochanostra.com
La Pocha Nostra is a transdisciplinary arts organization that provides a support network
and forum for artists of various disciplines, generations and ethnic backgrounds. La
Pocha is devoted to erasing the borders between art and politics, art practice and
theory, artist and spectator. La Pocha Nostra has intensely focused on the notion of
collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of radical
citizen diplomacy and as a means to create “ephemeral communities” of rebel artists.
Every year, La Pocha conducts a summer and a winter performance art school in which Pocha’s radical pedagogy (a performance ‘methodology that has been developed during the last 10 years) is shared with a group of radical artists. The site for this pedagogical adventures changes every year.
With Gómez-Peña as artistic director, La Pocha Nostra has contributed to the cultural
debates of our times for nearly 30 years staging legendary performance art pieces
such as“The Cruci-fiction Project” (1994), “Temple of Confessions” (1995), “The
Mexterminator project” (1997-99), The Living Museum of Fetishized Identities, (1999-
2002) the “Mapa/Corpo” series (2004-2009) and most recently Corpo-Ilicito (2010-2011).
La Pocha Nostra’s performance work mixes experimental aesthetics, activist politics,
Spanglish humor and audience participation to create a "total experience" for the
audience member/reader/viewer. These strategies can be found in a new live
performance work by troupe members Gomez-Pena and Sifuentes and several award winning video art pieces. La Pocha Nostra, has been considered by critics to be “the most influential Latino performance art troupe of the last 10 years.” El Pais, Spain.
Continually developing multi-centric narratives and large-scale performance projects
from a border perspective, La Pocha Nostra creates what critics have termed "Chicano
cyber-punk performances," and "ethno-techno art." In the work, cultural borders have
moved to the center while the alleged mainstream is pushed to the margins and treated
as exotic and unfamiliar, placing the audience members and readers in the position
of "foreigners" or "minorities."
As of July 2012, core troupe members of La Pocha Nostra are Guillermo Gomez-Peña
(Mexico/US), Roberto Sifuentes (US), Michele Ceballos Michot (US/Colombia) Emma
Tramposch (US/New Zealand), Violeta Luna (Mexico/US) Dani d’Emilia (Brazil/Portugal), Erica Mott (US) and Saúl García López (Mexico/Canada).
La Pocha Pocha Nostra’s artwork has been presented at over nine hundred venues
across the US, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the UK, Germany, Belgium, Greece,
Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland, Russia, Australia, South Africa,
Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and Argentina. In recent
years, the troupe has presented work at Tate Modern (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), the
Guggenheim Museum (New York), LACMA (Los Angeles), the House of World Cultures
and the Volksbuhne (Berlin), MACBA (Barcelona), El Museo de la Ciudad (Mexico
City) and the Encuentros Hemisféricos in Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and
Buenos Aires. La Pocha Nostra has participated in the following Biennales: Havana,
The Withney, Sydney, Liverpool, Thessaloniki and Mercosur. The troupe’s photoperformances are now in the permanent collection of Daros Foundation (Zurich) and Galeria Artificios (Gran Canaria).
Selected performances, international events & festivals:
2012 Steirischer Herbst Festival of New Art, Dom im Berg, Graz, Austria
2012 Gran Galeria del Centro Cultural Acapulco, Mexico
2012 Festival de Teatro de Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, Mexico
2012 Festival Internacional de Teatro, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil
2012 CASA (Centro de las Artes), Oaxaca, Mexico
2012 Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Gran Canaria, Spain
2012 Ode'min Giizis Festival, Peterborough, Canada
2011 SFCamerawork, San Francisco, CA
2011 SOMArts, San Francisco, CA
2011 Cal Arts, Valencia, CA
2011 Belles Artes, Mexico City, Mexico
2011 Tribe, Saskatoon, Canada
2011 Neutral Ground, Regina, Canada
2011 Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
2011 Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
2011 Mills College, Oakland, CA
2011 Wooster University, Wooster, OH
2011 CounterPULSE, San Francisco, CA
2011 Club LaMaMa, New York, NY
2011 Performance Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
2011 American Theater in Higher Education Conference, Chicago, IL
2011 Museo de Las Americas, Denver, CO
2011 Su Teatro, Denver, CO
2010 Middlebury College, Middlebury Vermont
2010 Gordon Institute for Performing Arts, Cape Town South Africa
2010 National Review of Live Arts, Glasgow, Scotland
2010 Berkeley University, Berkeley, California
2010 Columbia College, Chicago, IL
2010 Danube Festival, Vienna, Austria
2010 Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
2010 San Franciso Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco
2010 Museo de las Americas, Denver, Colorado
2010 York University, Toronto, Canada
2010 La Perrera, Oaxaca, Mexico
2010 Smithsonian Museum of American History, Washington, DC
2010 SF Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
2010 Instituto Buena Bista, Curacao, Netherlands
2010 Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK
2010 The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
2010 Gala Theater, Washington, DC
2009 ANTI Art Festival, Kuopio, Finland
2009 Barroquísimo, Puebla, Mexico
2009 Prisma, Mexico City and Oaxaca, Mexico
2009 Thessaloniki Biennal, Greece
2009 La Habana Biennial, Habana, Cuba
2009 El Art Es Accion, Tatro Valle-Inclán, Madrid, Spain
2009 The “Trouble” Festival, Bruxells, Belgium
2009 The Maison Folie, Mons, Belgium
2008 Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto
2008 DIA Museum, Detroit
2008 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scottland
2008 The “Prognoses” Festival, HAU Theater, Berlin
2008 Festival “Escrita na Paisagem,” Covento do Carmen,Evora, Portugal
2008 Casa de las Americas, Lisbon, Portugal2007 Arnolfini, Bristol
2007 Center for Contemporary Art, New Orleans
2007 Cal Arts, Los Angeles
2007 Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
2007 Centro Cultural La Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2007 The “Border Exercises” Festival, Harstad, Norway
2007 National Review of Live Art, Glasgow
2006 de Young Museum, San Francisco
2006 Museo de la Ciudad, Mexico City
2006 PSI (Performance Studies Internacional), London
2006 University of California, Humanities Research Institute,
Irvine, California
2006 Center for Performance Research, Aberystwyth, Wales
2005 Galeria Artificios. Gran Canaria, Canary Islands.
2005 Bienal del Mercosur, Porto Alegre, Brazil
2005 LACMA, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Encontro Hemisferico. Belo Horizonte, Brazil
2005 ARCO, Madrid, Spain
2005 Toronto Free Gallery. Toronto, Canada.
2004 Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
2004 Cervantino Festival, Guanajuato, Mexico
2004 Detox Festival, several cities in Norway, 2004
2003 Zuerher Theatre Spektakle. Zurich, Switzerland
2003 Muffathalle, Munich, Germany
2003 Center for Performance Research. Aberystwyth, Wales
2003 Performance Space. Sydney, Australia
2003 Tate Modern, London, UK
2002 Volksbuhne /House of World Cultures. Berlin, Germany
2002 Liverpool Biennale. Liverpool, UK
2002 Encuentro Hemisférico. Lima, Peru
2001 Espacio C, Santandar, Spain
2001 Performance Space. Sydney, Australia
2001 Ayuntamiento de la Gran Canaria, Canary Islands
2001 Experiències: Barcelona Art Report. La Capella.
Barcelona, Spain.
2001 Performance Space, Sydney, Australia.
2001 International Theater Festival, Havana, Cuba
2000 Encontro Hemisferico. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2000 Eventa 5, Sweden
1999 Sonart, MACBA. Barcelona, Spain
1999 Le Lieu International Performance Festival. Quebec,Canada
1999 Caribe 2000. San Juan, Puerto Rico
1998 Diaspora. Oviedo, Spain
1998 Inroads, Arts International. Miami, FL
1997 Root/less Festival. Hull, UK
1997 ARS Electrónica. Lintz, Austria
1996 Szene Festival. Salzburg, Austria
1996 Polverigi Theatre Festival. Ancona, Italy
1996 5Cyberconf. Madrid, Spain
1996 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
1995 LIFT. London, UK
1995 X-Teresa Arte Alternativo, Mexico City
1995 Helsinki Act, Finland
1994 Ante-América. Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia; Museo Alejandro Otero-Caracas, Venezuela; The Queens Museum of Art-New York; Centro Cultural de
la Raza-San Diego, CA; The Center For the Arts, Yerbabuena Gardens, San Francisco, CA; The Spencer Art Museum-Lawrence, Kansas; Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo-San José, Costa Rica.
1994 Banff Centre, Banff, Canada.
1993 The Los Angeles Festival, MOCA, Los Angeles, CA
1993 LIFT. London, UK
1993 III Festival de Performance. X-Teresa, Mexico City.
1993 The Hamburg Theatre Festival. Hamburg, Germany
1993 Festival Rompeforma, San Juan, Puerto Rico
1993 Fundación Banco Patricios. Buenos Aires, Argentina
1993 The Whitney Biennial, New York, NY
1992 The Sydney Biennial. Sydney, Australia
1992 EDGE ’92. Madrid-London, UK
1991 The Festival of the Worlds. Helsinki, Finland
1991 The Next Wave Festival. Brooklyn Academy of Music,Brooklyn, NY
1990 The Los Angeles Festival, MOCA, Los Angeles, CA.
1990 EDGE ’90. Newcastle, England
1989 Biennale de la Havana, Havana, Cuba
1990 The Decade Show, Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, Museo del Barrio, New York.
1989 The Demons des Anges. (Touring exhibition, 1989-90) Halle du Centre de Recherche pour le Developpement Culturel, Nantes, France; Centre d' Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain, Kulterhuset, Stockholm, Sweden; Espace Lyonnais d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, France
1988 The International Theatre Festival of the Americas. Montreal, Canada
