Performance: A$$Mutation X GLITTER BEACH

Please join us for a special performance by Jacquelyn Carmen "CQQCHIFRUIT" Guerrero and Sofia Moreno on "A$$Mutation X Glitter Beach", a collaborative installation featuring a sequin ocean tapestry and glitter sand by CQQCHIFRUIT with sculptures by Sofia Moreno and "Coral" by Molly Hewitt that is currently on display at Gallery 400 as a part of the "Making Chances" exhibition (curated by Lorelei Stewart and John Neff as a part of "PLATFORMS: 10 Years of Chance Dances"). This performance references the artists' shared and personal practices embodying powerful spirits while invoking the ocean as a site of death, transformation, rebirth, origins, trauma, rage, healing, love, and community. Together, they are witness to each others' simultaneous spiritual and corporal evolution-mutation. The first incarnation of "Glitter Beach" ocurred as a solo performative installation by CQQchiFruit inside of Jay Pritzker Pavilion as a part of REVIVAL in October 2013. This was followed by a collaboration with Sofia Moreno at the Bitchez Optionz afterparty for the Chances Dances curated exhibition "Summoning A New Queer Reality" at the MCA in December 2013. Most recently, Moreno's solo exhibition and performance P o r n A g a i n Vol.2-A$$Mutation was on display at the Learning Machine in July of 2015. Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero aka CQQCHIFRUIT is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist of AfroCuban and Puerto Rican descent whose studies include movement & dance, queer and tropical cultures, music, performance, sequin & glitter arts, costuming and visual design. Originally from Miami, FL, Cqqchifruit explores and celebrates aspects of their intersection of identities ranging from gender and eroticism to spirituality and cultural reclamation, using performance as public protest intended to dismantle oppressions placed on their body by society, and uplift the spirits of those who experience their werq. Cqqchifruit also hopes to spark personal and community dialogue that honors the divinity of queer and feminine energies. They are an organizer and DJ with Chances Dances, a queer dance party and collective dedicated to creating safer spaces in Chicago.since 2005, and a resident DJ of TRQPITECA, a tropical dance party In Pilsen. Pronouns: They & them, she & her. Sofia Moreno was born and raised in Coahuila, Mexico. In 1994, she immigrated to the United States and lived in Dallas, Texas. She then moved to Chicago, where she currently lives and works. Sofia is a multimedia artist and her subjects include expressions of the sacred and profane, the body, sexuality, religion and socio-political issues within contemporary culture. Moreno is currently working on the follow up to her six-year project, P o r n A g a i n. "I'm interested in the essence of the body rather than the form itself. I paint a sexually and spiritually confused youth." With her ongoing project - P o r n A g a i n - we arrive at the final part of a series of videos and installations by the artist. With A$$Mutation, Sofia immerses us into the depths of the ocean and retells the classic Little Mermaid tale. Her version is filled with hybrid creatures, environmental wastelands, and the detritus of desire and disillusionment. From video to paintings, sculptures, sound, and costumes, Moreno twists shapes and invokes chaos to combine the interactions of trans-identity, technology, and the sex industry to create beautifully monstrous work that appears alien, violent and sexually unapologetic in the midst of the aquatic myth. Unlike Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, these nymphs are viscous–built from amalgamation of synthetic and natural materials. Outcasted hybrids that are culturally constructed from Moreno’s Mayan lineage and the psycho-pop of our culture overrun with millennials and their waste. Moreno uses this as an opportunity to build from the immersive environment, handmade in relation to that of her body. What seems to be myth and fantasy quickly traverses into that of a harsh reality. Gallery 400 is ADA accessible, all ages welcome Doors will open at 6pm, Performance at 7pm