Gabrielle Civil
Saturday, September 21
Doors: 6:30pm
Event: 7pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
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The Poetic Research Bureau presents the Los Angeles launch of Gabrielle Civil’s performance memoir In & Out of Place, with Rosa Evangelina Beltrán and Marco Villalobos.
What does it mean to be in a place and out of place at the same time? Gabrielle Civil explores this question by making black feminist performance art in Mexico. She asks unsuspecting Mexicans if they have good hair, visits legendary black expatriate artist Elizabeth Catlett, celebrates Obama’s first election with mariachis, embarks on love affairs, dresses up as a Mexican doll, and christens herself with Negrita rum. Archiving her 2008-2009 Fulbright fellowship project, In and Out of Place combines diary entries, images, performance texts, critical commentary, and current reflections. Civil explores—and expands—the parameters of her own body, artistic process, heritage, and culture. She retraces—and activates—her trajectory as a black woman artist in the world.
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Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over fifty original performances worldwide, most recently My San Francisco (2024) and Black Weirdo School (Pop Up Critique) (2023). Her latest performance memoir, In & Out of Place (2024), encompasses her time making art as a Fulbright Fellow in Mexico. Her writing also appears in New Daughters of Africa, Kitchen Table Translation, Migrating Pedagogies, and A Mouth Holds Many Things. She teaches writing and performance at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.
Rosa Evangelina Beltrán is a vocalist, poet, and educator based in Los Angeles. Her work often activates language and energetic traces left behind by ancestors, including her past selves. In 1986, her espiritú + nervous system came together in Guadalajara, Mexico and a year later they all traveled in mom’s arms to L.A. and Ontario, California for a better life. Since then, Rosa has studied humanities, writing, and music at Harvard, L.A. Valley College, and CalArts. Her studies and work have been supported by the REEF Residency, Mercedes & Gabriel García Marquez Scholarship, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship.
Marco Villalobos is a filmmaker and writer rooted in poetry. Over the last decade his work has illuminated and connected contemporary Afro-Latinx experiences across the Americas. His short films have screened throughout Latin America while his written work is anthologized in major publications and periodicals. He is a William J. Fulbright scholar, a UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate, and a Latino Public Broadcasting fellow. Villalobos's recent work includes the 2020 film adaptation of Joan Didion’s novel, The Last Thing He Wanted.