Local Artists of the Week: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and James Luna
LOCAL ARTISTS Guillermo Gómez-Peña and James Luna
TITLE Photos of El Mexican’t and The Shame-man
THE STORY Chicano performance artist Gómez-Peña’s and Native American conceptual artist Luna’s ongoing project The Shame-man meets El Mexican’t challenges stereotypes, assumptions, and lazy thinking about race and culture. Their latest collaboration within the series, La Nostalgia, reveals how that term can be used as a mechanism of cultural defense, as a stylistic device, and as a way of revising the artist’s careers. In a pair of performances last year, the artists staged their ritual deaths inside coffins and then engaged in a poetic dialogue while Luna cooked Indian stew and Gómez-Peña played roulette.
SHOWS: La Nostalgia Re-mix (Best hits and outtakes for an imaginary bar). Thurs/26, 8 p.m.; $10–$20. The LAB, 2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-8855, www.thelab.org. (Also, on July 11, Gómez-Peña’s group La Pocha Nostra will present four performance/installation pieces at the de Young Museum.)
WEB SITES www.pochanostra.com, www.jameslunaprojects.com
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