Amanda Maciel Antunes is a self-taught artist and considers her art a transdisciplinary and spiritual practice. She creates for/in non-traditional spaces and works on responsive and durational projects, often concerned with anthropological texts and poetry in translation. Her practice reflects on the selective nature of memory, language and cultural heritage, as processes that help us adapt and interpret our present. She is currently working on her first publication titled Second Birth with HEXENTEXTE, inspired by her research of the Anaïs Nin Papers archived at UCLA.
Photo of the artist by Erik Graham
Artist Location: Los Angeles, CA
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PARTICIPATION
Online video September 4th:
Where We Go From Here & Performance For Two
Where We Go From Here
How does the perceived permanence or temporality of our location affect us? Where We Go From Here is a film and performance intended to recreate the experience of being in different places at the same time.
Where We Go From Here video was shot between 2018-2019 during residences in the Amazon, Brazil, and the artist’s migration to Los Angeles. The footage was all recorded with a cellphone. Sound is a collection of fieldwork between these various locations.
This video is an artifact of time in migration. And it supports a live performance of the same name. First Half of the film is a single journey in time, followed by the second half which leads the audience into a life performance.
Performance For Two
Often times, as artists, as immigrants, and as women, the source of strength which we need when the outer world fails us, comes from another woman. This video and soundscape create a place where I condense the interpretation of myths about our lives as immigrant women. I perform in conversation with my past self. And all the versions of that woman that led me to this present moment. What words get to be erased and what words get to be re-learned. In this process I proceed to identify and distinguish between the false selves that our culture has enforced on us, and the true parts of my womanhood which I want to preserve. In this film I work with a poem I titled “What is Blasphemy?” in response to receiving my American Citizenship, and in the promise of becoming a citizen I uttered words I could not stand behind. I reflect on these promises I’ve made to survive and the promises made as illusions.