QUEER|ART|PRIZE 2022 RECENT WORK FINALIST

BORN WITH AN EXTRA RIB (2021) BY STEFA MARIN ALARCON

stefa marin alarcon is a trans non-binary vocalist, composer, educator, and multimedia performance artist born and raised in Queens, NY to Colombian immigrants. Using an amalgamation of punk, experimental rage pop, and classical minimalism with maximalist aesthetics, stefa builds worlds that offer a somatic decolonial respite for the misfits, the displaced, and future generations of Brown and Indigenous radical artists of the diaspora. Their artistic practice explores concepts of home, identity, gender, borders, erased ancestry, and radical trans, queer & Native futures through music, theater, ritual performance, and video. stefa has shared their work, spirit, and song with Queens Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Museo Del Barrio, The Kitchen, Ars Nova, National Sawdust, BAAD!, NUEVOFest, Abrons Arts Center, Dixon Place, Tulsa Artist Residency, Cine Las Americas, The Vienna Festival, Body Hack, Fierce Futures and more. They studied euro-centric classical voice at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and concentrated in drama at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. They were an Artist-in-Residence at TrueQué Residencia Artística, Slippage Residency at Duke University in collaboration with Mx Oops, as well as a Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics EmergeNYC Fellow, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art Artist Fellow, and Artist In Residence at The Kitchen NYC. Their debut EP Sepalina was released on Figure & Ground Records in 2018 and their forthcoming multi-media record, Born With An Extra Rib, will be released Winter 2023.

BORN WITH AN EXTRA RIB (2021)

Born With An Extra Rib is a transdisciplinary opera featuring multimedia artist and composer stefa marin alarcon. Descended from the Emberá-Chamí people, stefa is a Colombian-American musician, born and raised in Queens, New York. Emerging from the questions behind their upcoming record Born With An Extra Rib, this experimental opera creates a structure for stefa to reclaim and return to their body. They used video collage, live music, and ritual performance to ask their most pressing, embodied questions. Through the production, stefa invited the cast, creative team, and audience to engage in an emergent process of collective liberation. Learn more here.