Elyla

Critical text

Elyla (b. 1989, Chontales) is a performance artist and activist, whose work deals with creating resistance to colonial, imperialist, and western ideologies around the construction of identity politics and nation-state cultural narratives, specifically in relation to mestizaje, queerness (cochoneidad), and indigenous ancestry. The artist coined the term barro-mestiza to take distance from the traditional and colonial understanding of mestizaje during the ongoing process of decolonization. Elyla is committed to research how decolonial reflections can lead to a community based anti-colonial artistic praxis in Central America. The artist’s earlier works dealt with contesting the patriarchal and repressive narratives upheld by the Latin American left and its effects on gender and sexually diverse people. In 2013, Elyla co-founded the Operación Queer/Cochona collective that blurred the boundaries between academia, art, and activism by creating interventions in Mesoamerica. Elyla’s performance artwork often works around elements from Nicaraguan Indigenous traditions while testing their body limits and contesting the myth of mestizaje. Ultimately, Elyla explores the intersections of contemporary visual culture, anticolonial artistic praxis, and the sacred.

Text by Léon Kruijswijk, Joel Valabrega

The artist’s voice

The context in which my performances happen are mostly site-specific and related to different responses to the political climate of the space I’m at… or my own personal questionings and need to do research, regarding certain subjects.