QUEER|ART|PRIZE 2018 RECENT WORK FINALIST

the hook up/displacement/barhopping/drama tour (2018) BY xandra ibarra

xandra ibarra

*photo by 2012-2013 QAM Fellow Camilo Godoy*

Xandra Ibarra is an Oakland-based performance artist from the US/Mexico border who sometimes works under the alias of La Chica Boom. Ibarra uses hyperbolized modes of racialization and sexualization to test the boundaries between her own body and coloniality, compulsory whiteness, and Mexicanidad. Ibarra’s work has been featured at El Museo de Arte Contemporañeo (Bogotá, Colombia), Broad Museum (LA, USA), Popa Gallery (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Joe’s Pub (NYC), PPOW Gallery (NYC), Anderson Collection (Stanford) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF) to name a few. She has been awarded the Art Matters Grant, NALAC Fund for the Arts, ReGen Artist Fund, and the Franklin Furnace Performance and Variable Media Award. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, ArtNews and in various academic journals nationally and internationally. She is currently curating a year long performance art series at The Broad Museum (LA) with Nao Bustamante entitled EN CUATRO PATAS. As a community organizer, Ibarra’s work is located within feminist immigrant, anti-rape and prison abolitionist movements. Since 2003, she has actively participated in organizing with INCITE!, a national feminist of color organization dedicated to creating interventions at the intersection of state and interpersonal violence. She currently lectures within the Critical Studies program at California College of the Arts.

the hook up/displacement/barhopping/ drama tour (2017)

”It’s been exhausting to stay afloat in this era that promises a wider gap between the rich and poor. In the past two decades, low-income and of-color communities have struggled to keep their housing in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco and abroad. Many adored queer nightlife venues and other convivial spaces have disappeared and resurfaced as sterile establishments that attract upwardly mobile and affluent demographics. In an effort to resurface the “messy” and “sucio” spirits of queer Latino and lesbian ghosts from gentrified sites in San Francisco, Ibarra led strangers and friends on a bar crawl tour to five former queer Latino and Lesbian bars in San Francisco. Together the group made alters, wrote messages, imprinted their bodies, pleasures and kisses onto the phantom walls of beloved queer venues — Esta Noche (1979 – 2014), La India Bonita (late 70s – 1996), Amelia’s (1978 – 1991), The Lexington (1997- 2015), and Osento (1979 – 2008). Strangers and friends sipped on spirits, danced, made out, and posted counterfeit “Public Notices of Application for Ownership Change” while 1990s footage of queer Latinos and Lesbians in the former bars was projected onto walls.” —Xandra Ibarra