Image of Lupé, Nima and Max performing in “OG of the Undocumented Children” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Filip Wolak, courtesy of the Whitney Museum.
By Lindsay Parnell (BFA ’17)
I’ll never forget the performances that happened in my first class with Lupé Maravilla (formerly known as Irvin Morazan). From Jun Oh Yu (BFA ’17) catching trash cans on fire to Max Runko (BFA ’16) feeding us chewed up Chick-fil-a like we were baby birds, Lupé actually had to make us sign a liability waiver saying that we were all responsible for our own actions. This waiver definitely didn’t tame the class; we were excited that the doors were open for us to experiment with performance in a way that we had never felt free to before.
Lupé’s journey with VCUarts started in 2015 when he was the Fountainhead Fellow in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media. He returned the following year as a visiting faculty member to teach performance classes to a core group of students yearning to investigate this expressive art form. That’s where I met him. I didn’t get into art school at first, so I was a year late going through AFO and starting in Sculpture. The timing was perfect for me to enter Lupé’s class. You know how they say that everything happens for a reason?
Lupé and I laugh and dance in my piece “Conversation via Scores.” This piece was a collaboration with Natasha Kovacs (BFA ’16), who I began working with in Lupé’s class and continue working with today.
This class ended up being more than a group of people showing up to a crit room at the same time every day. We were truly a loving community of artists who were eager to learn and grow together. Our agencies as performers were finally being heard and taken seriously. We didn’t feel like we had to make objects with whatever material of the week to receive validity from our peers and faculty.
Our bond remains strong. Last month—two years after our class ended—when we all gathered in New York for Lupé performance at the Whitney, we picked up right where we left off.
Image of “OG of the Undocumented Children” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Filip Wolak, courtesy of the Whitney Museum.
His piece, “OG of the Undocumented Children,” was a beautiful collage of movement, sound and costuming that led viewers to investigate the displacement of Central American people. Lupé told the story of how he became an undocumented immigrant when he was 8 years old, escorted by a Coyote, or human trafficker, and a dog. He then invited audience members to come up onto the stage with him to see if he was really a “blood-sucking vampire” like many Americans have called him and his family. Final result: negative.
I knew I felt at home when I saw Jun Oh (yes, the same one who set the trash cans on fire) running behind Lupé’s group of performers at the Whitney trying to get the perfect angle for documentation. This is something that Lupé taught us, and Jun Oh has mastered. Then, I realized that one of the performers in a full silver jumpsuit and a tiger mask was Max and another Nima Jeizan (BFA ’18). Others surrounded me in the crowd. Like my dear friend Park Hyun Gi (BFA ’17) who has since travelled all over the world designing amazingly elaborate tattoos for friends in places like Italy, Greece and South Korea. And Grace Whiteside (BFA ’17), who now lives in Brooklyn and recently had an amazing performance at Recess Art Space in partnership with another former Fountainhead Fellow, Illana Harris-Babou.
As I stood between Park and Gracie, I thought to myself just how lucky we all were to end up in that performance class together, and how Lupé helped us create this community that extends far past the sculpture department and stems from a deep place of empathy and understanding.
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