‘COLOR BONITA’ CONNECTS AUDIENCES WITH QUEER LATINO EXPERIENCE

MULTI-MEDIA PERFORMANCE PIECE ‘COLOR BONITA’ BY ARTIST CHRISTOPHER RAMIREZ INTIMATELY CONNECTS AUDIENCES WITH QUEER LATINO EXPERIENCE

‘Color Bonita’, a new media art performance piece by artist Christopher Ramirez, in collaboration with Phoenix Toews, premiers at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Village at Ed Gould Plaza’s Ronberg Theater on Saturday, January 19, 7PM-10PM.

The performance connects audiences with the queer Latino experience around family, religion, machismo and homophobia. This is a free event and the Renberg Theater is located at 1125 N McCadden Place, Los Angeles 90038.

‘Color Bonita’ began several years ago as an ethnographic art project in Los Angeles, California. Over 100 initial conversations occurred over a two year period in various locations throughout Los Angeles County with Latino men who identified as gay, homosexual, bisexual, men “on the down-low” (on the DL) and men who have with sex men (MSM). ‘Color Bonita’ is a collection of voices from 29 of these recorded interviews focusing on the Latino family, the Catholic Church, homophobia, machismo, and racism.  Ramirez combines sound, images and interviews to illuminate the complexity of growing up gay in the Latino culture as an act of witnessing and testimony.

Artist Christopher Ramirez has presented ‘Color Bonita’ in both educational (professional conferences and community centers) and festival contexts (performance, film, art) throughout the United States. The actual art piece is the digital audio recording that takes place in each location, and becomes part of an evolving sound archive, ‘Color Bonita’.  In essence, audience members become participants themselves in a dialogue that illuminates the complexities of the gay Latino experience and how others bear witness to this history.  Audiences will experience that history through performance, sound, images and a live interview between Christopher, an invited guest and the audience. Christopher refers to this experience as a dialogic new media performance.

MORE ABOUT CHRISTOPHER RAMIREZ & CALIFORNIA LGBT ARTS ALLIANCE

Christopher Angel Ramirez is a Multimedia Artist and a Writing Lecturer at University of California, Merced in Merced, California and ‘Color Bonita’ is presented by the California LGBT Arts Alliance.

The California LGBT Arts Alliance promotes social justice, advocates for cultural equity, increases public understanding of diversity and presents artists whose work reflects the LGBT community’s lives and experiences. Their programs promote artist collaborations, financial partnerships and public policies that enhance the development of LGBT artists and arts organizations in Southern California. The Alliance publishes a monthly calendar of California LGBT art events on their website.

This program is presented in partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center and with the support of the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts program.

You can RSVP for the event HERE