First Look At Martine Gutierrez's New Work CIRCLE

Performance Space New York continues The Stages Series-rethinking the dominant form and aesthetics that have informed the stage for centuries-with Martine Gutierrez's Circle (November 20, 22-23).

Gutierrez offers clearance to audiences brave enough to enter the secure facility of Circle, the leading corporation in the development of biological warfare and transgenesis. Held captive under militant surveillance, Eve-named by her creator, Dr. Red-is the first humanoid to be bioengineered with reanimated "alien" DNA discovered in the Mayan cave Xibalba, or "place of fear." Believed to be the mouth of the underworld, Dr. Red's evidence of a stargate on Earth may finally be proven with Eve's help. Protective cover-wear will be provided upon entry, to reduce the pollution of human contaminants as viewers venture into the depths of Circle. Will Eve be the key to humanity's evolution, or its undoing?

Gutierrez brings '90s sci-fi and cinema's obsession with femme humanoids, clones, and hybrids together with unsolved mysteries of Mesoamerican extraterrestrial sightings and the Mayan legend surrounding the underworld of Xibalba. With Circle, Gutierrez expands her artistic practice of embodying exaggerated visions of femininity wrought by pop culture's reflection and reification of identity and desire.

Gutierrez's most recent work was Indigenous Woman-for which she created a 146-page art magazine in which she interrogated notions of authenticity and asked "how identity is formed, expressed, valued, and weighed as a woman, as a transwoman, as a latinx woman, as a woman of indigenous descent, as a femme artist and maker." Vice wrote of the project, "By establishing a practice of full autonomy, wherein Gutierrez conceptualizes and executes every detail on both sides of the camera, the artist has taken complete control of her narrative." In Circle, Gutierrez is no longer turning the lens of the camera onto herself, but rather the lens of the audience-controlling the way in which her body, even as a being under the scrutiny of a mysterious corporation and its peering visitors, is perceived.

Gutierrez says, "The most real and profound boundaries are those we impose upon ourselves." With Eve, this femme creature in captivity in an eroticizing, exoticizing '90s sci-fi narrative, Gutierrez may, as she describes, be "commenting on [her] own 'otherness.'" But as Circle invites and selectively obscures the gaze of the voyeurs surrounding her antiseptic habitat, the performance also challenges the audience to engage with their own otherness, as well as their insecurities and prejudices.

Pop culture has long been a source of inspiration for Gutierrez, especially how her status changes depending upon how she's perceived. "Am I suddenly more palatable because of the particular character on display? It is my practice of autonomy over my own image that gives me the power to advocate for and objectify my body without being tokenized or used to assume allyship," says Gutierrez. "I often look to cinema, television, advertisements and pop music as a stage on which to act out my own narrative. These re-imaginings of the self call attention to the fictions that surround and define us all-those we internalize through daily life and those we create."

Performances of Circle will take place at Performance Space New York (150 1st Avenue 4th floor, New York) on November 20, 22-23 at 7, 7:30, 8pm. Tickets are $25, and are available at performacespacenewyork.org.

The Stages Series, Performance Space New York Deputy Director Pati Hertling's first large-scale curatorial project at the organization, invites artists to propose new platforms and conditions that transgress the black box and its institutional walls, positioning performance as an act of creation for and towards the future. The series began with work from rafa esparza (September 23), and features installations by Sarah Zapata (through January 19) and Renata Lucas (through November 2). Beyond Gutierrez's Circle, it includes An Evening With Princess Nokia (November 3), performances from Kia LaBeija (November 7-9), Julie Tolentino (December 7-13), Julie Tolentino and Stosh Fila (December 12), ray ferreira (December 19-21), and Mariana Valencia (January 9-11, 16-18); a queer nightlife experiment by Julie Tolentino and Oscar Nñ (November 16); a GUSH party (October 25); a series led by S.J Norman and Joseph M. Pierce (January 11-12); and a Marathon Reading of Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, co-organized by Sarah Schulman with Shellyne Rodriguez, Charles Rice-González, and Norma Cantú (October 20).

Acting as subject, artist, and muse, Gutierrez works to convey her own fluid identity-an identity that bridges the binaries of gender and ethnicity. In documenting her personal metamorphosis into various imagined roles, she aims in part to subvert cis, white, Western standards of beauty and raise questions about inclusivity, appropriation and consumerism.

Gutierrez works in a range of media, usually taking on every production role. Previous projects include large-scale billboards, MTV-style music videos, and glossy photo spreads, all in which she stars alongside the seductive tools of luxury consumerism-life size backdrops, lacquered lips, sports cars and mannequins. There's resourcefulness and illusion at play here, too. While they're often mistaken for expensive productions, these projects are all self-produced on a meager budget.

Though Gutierrez's characters appear familiar, they are not representations of reality; rather, they are hyperbolized manifestations of feminine glamour, desire, and sexuality, embodied by figures traveling through various decades and landscapes. Through these fantasy femmes, she looks at shifting standards rooted in time and place, in contextual cultural ideals. Sitting in soft focus just behind the eyes-in a gesture, or exchange between herself and the audience-lies the unresolved reality: Who is she?