« Corps-prendre » l’Amérique latine : les performances de Karen Veloso et de Scheherazade Zambrano Orozco

Abstract

In their performances mainly performed in France, Karen Veloso (Chile, 1979) and Scheherazade Zambrano Orozco (Mexico, 1985), claim to embody their country's memory through the masterful and engaged presence of their bodies in the performance space, the ambiguous and specular role assigned to their audiences and the deliberately liminal and autobiographical dimension of their creations. The four performances analyzed in this article - Ramona au grill, Superposition (Karen Veloso, 2011 and 2019) as well as Plis et Vertiges and Chutes (Scheherazade Zambrano Orozco, 2013 and 2014) - first seek to confuse the viewer's usual gaze on their own reality (their relationship to the University), their daily practices (their relationship to the screens) as well as their vision of Latin America regarding, among other things, forced disappearance, narcotrafficking crimes and the relationship to the land. Moreover, thanks to different dramaturgical, aesthetic, and performative processes, the two artists succeed in bringing the bodily experience of their Latin Americanity closer to the audience or, one could say, allow the audience to "corps-prendre" ("body-take") the reality of the Latin American subcontinent.

Keywords

• Mexico
• Chile
• drug trafficking
• performance
• liminal theater
• Latino America