SHANA ROBBINS

(digital maquette courtesy of the artist)

Monstrous Feminine in Mexico

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Many contemporary artists like myself are attempting to stabilize new hybrid forms of identities based on technological developments and new indigenous earth cosmologies that transform time, space, human identity and the repercussions of that. Modern day rituals and mythologies are an attempt to create new horizons of meaning around all of this, while still affirming and recoding former rituals. We continue to explore methods of movement and storytelling that pull from ancient narratives of birth, death, identity and transformation—in a novel co-creation with the cultural, ecological, and social formations of our current environment.

 Drawing on my experience over the past several years with shamanic ceremonies that link the body with the Earth and engage roles of conduit and healer, I perform durational ritualized gestures in unique landscapes and earth installations. My work is a layered conversation between experiential and visual art media--the works on paper serving as oracular blueprints for labor-intensive installations and live and video performances in Iceland, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Florida, and rural Georgia. These pieces explore the tension between meditatively slow and sensual/erotic movements—a communing with and bodying forth of natural phenomena in an ancestral dance with visible and invisible allies. We too are indigenous to the planet.