Throughout this second week of presentations, I found Xandra Ibarra very interesting and different from any other artists we looked at. I think what caught my eye is that she is a performance artist, something foreign to me. I never found performance artists to be serious artists and sometimes I don't fully understand what they are doing. I think this confusion drew me towards Xandra because she made me think hard about what her acts mean and what she is commenting about. Through the presentation, it was made clear that she uses her body to test the boundaries between racial and sexual stereotypes. I found that she uses her own body to create a conversation between racial, sexual, gender, and colonial subjects. I think that her performances are extreme because they need to be because without this extremity they would not invoke such strong feelings. I also think that some of her performances are supposed to make people feel uncomfortable so that members of her audience that aren't familiar with her work can form an opinion and talk about the issues she tackles. Overall, I don't fully understand all of Xandra's work, but I think that its okay to be left dumbfounded or speechless when viewing art, and I think it makes people want to understand it more.
I as well did not fully understand understand Xandra's work, but I also have never seen that type of street performance before. I like how her style and work is unique but I thought it was a little to extreme for me.
ReplyDeleteI too loved Xandra's performance art. She truly made a difference and stood out compared to the other artists. I enjoyed watching her presentation as she caught my eye. We all know art can sometime be boring if you are not interested in the topic or artist involved, but I think the attraction with Xandra was that she used her body. He use of her body made every person relate to her as we all have bodies just like hers. The connection to Xandra's work then became stronger as we all see ourselves in her.
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