Oraciones de Tres Madres
2021

Performance / multimedia installation

Duration: 40 minutes.

Volcanoes installation by Felipe Vasquez. Sand, gunpowder and fire. Variables dimensions. 

Bouzouki live performance and installation by Marc Lochner.

Sound installation by Felipe Vasquez, Mathieu Bonnafous and Marc Lochner. Three audio cassettes players with respective tapes, connected to individual speakers. Variables dimensions.  

Sound composition by Felipe Vasquez and Mathieu Bonnafous. Engineering and mixing by Mathieu Bonnafous. With original text and readings by Aurora Briñez, Aida Truisi and Marta Lucia Vasquez. Plus original field recordings by Mathieu Bonnafous (except “Thunder Storm” by Marc Lochner.) Transferred to cassette tapes.

Costume design by Marie-Jo Albrecht.

Oraciones de Tres Madres (Prayers of Three Mothers) was conceived from prayers that were given to me by my mother, my grandmother and my aunt. As a child, I was raised by these three women in Colombia. However, upon relocating to the U.S. with my father, I was bound to face great distance from the monumental influence of these feminine figures. My grandmother died from Covid-19 in 2021 at the age of 89. Oraciones is therefore an homage; a ceremony that celebrates spiritual devotion and the links we thread despite whatever space between us. It was an event to imagine alternative ways of communication and engage in a sort of requiem — gathered from a collective energy of presence, sound and the purifying and ephemeral qualities of fire. 

All of the prayers were recorded as telephone voice messages in 2019. They are original texts created specifically for the artist, as spiritual offerings of protection and benevolence. The prayers were materialized into an installation of three cassette tapes that unfold various soundscapes, produced in collaboration with artists Mathieu Bonnafous and Marc Lochner. The ceremony itself was guided by light and a choreography of improvised movements that symphonized all emotions at hand.

As part “Désordre des possibles”; a group exhibition par invitation of Julio Artist-run Space.

Espace Voltaire
Paris, France