Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York City
Amelia Bande, Fuera de Servicio (Out of Order), Acrylic on wood. 5 x 8 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Performance Series: Amelia Bande
Ensayo Abismal: A performance reimagining the conventions of telenovelas to explore vulnerability, agency, dependency, and the shared experience of care.
Overview
As part of our Performance Series, Art at Americas Society, in partnership with Music of the Americas, presents Ensayo Abismal (Abysmal Rehearsal) by Chilean artist Amelia Bande. This event is free, in-person, and open to the public.
Wednesday, February 3, 6–8 PM
680 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065
Registration is required
RSVP HERE
Doors open at 6 PM. The performance will begin promptly at 6:10 PM. Early arrival is suggested as space is limited, and entry is not guaranteed for late arrivals. The program's recording will be available on this website and on the Art at Americas Society YouTube channel.
Presented in conjunction with the Telenovela exhibition, Ensayo Abismal (Abysmal Rehearsal) unfolds on a telenovela set where a rehearsal is continually interrupted and reconfigured in response to the evolving needs of Bande’s character, transforming the stage into a space shaped by care, adaptation, and interdependence.
About the work:
At the center of the performance is the figure of la lisiada, a disabled character archetype commonly cast off to the margins of telenovelas. Bande reimagines this persona, placing it at the center of the performance and exposing the violence through which a world unequipped and unwilling to host her strips away agency and power. Rather than positioning la lisiada (the disabled woman) as a figure who triumphs over adversity, overcomes her disability, or transcends her circumstances through sheer will, the performance challenges the expectation that disabled bodies must change or overcome. Her presence does not resolve the violence enacted upon her, it makes that violence legible. The audience is invited to come along for the ride, not from a position of pity or as detached witnesses to abuse, but through an intersectional understanding of the sick body: a recognition that illness, vulnerability, dependency, and care are not exceptional conditions belonging to someone else, but shared and unevenly distributed aspects of being human. We are all vulnerable to sickness, and we are all implicated in the practices and structures of caregiving, whether as recipients, providers, or those whose care remains unseen or unsupported. la lisiada's power may lie not in overcoming her circumstances, but in exposing the structures that deny her agency and in unsettling the very terms through which agency is understood.
About the artist:
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Amelia Bande is a Chilean playwright, writer, artist and performer. Her solo and collaborative work has been shown at Artists Space, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, The Poetry Project, Storm King Arts Center, Participant Inc., BOFFO Performance Festival, EFA Project Space and more. She's been an Artist in Residence at Yaddo, MacDowell, FIAR, Human Resources and others. Published works include her plays Chueca, Partir y Renunciar, The Clothes We Wear and Ensayo Abismal. A sound archive of her early performances was released by Infinito Audio. She was co-editor of Critical Correspondence and Publishing Puppies. She’s currently Writer in Residence at New York University’s MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish and teaches at California Institute for the Arts.
Funders
Telenovela has been made possible by generous support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Henry Luce Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Cowles Charitable Trust, and Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Significant in-kind support has been provided by Globo.
Americas Society acknowledges the generous support from the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Amalia Amoedo, Ileana Anselin, Estrellita B. Brodsky, Virginia Cowles Schroth, Emily Engel, Wendy and Chuck Garrett, Blanca and Sunil Hirani, Isabella Hutchinson, Carolina Jannicelli, Diana López and Herman Sifontes, Elena Matsuura, Maggie Miqueo, Maria Mostajo, Antonio Murzi, Marco Pappalardo and Cintya Poletti Pappalardo, Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti, Carolina Pinciroli, Erica Roberts, Sharon Schultz, and Edward J. Sullivan.
