Tzara and Gomez-Pena

Guillermo Gomez-Pena is a Mexican/Chicano/American/Latino (his word choice of ethnicity changes depending on the context of his audience) performance artist, writer, and political activist whose work often relates to identity, culture, and the relation between the United States and Mexico.


TT: Guillermo, I notice you and your collaborators often dress up in your performances. Furthermore, your bodies are replete with tattoos, as though your bodies have become the canvas for some juvenile graffiti artist. I like how these senseless aesthetic choices appear to be the result of sporadic spur of the moment emotions.

GGP: What the fuck are you talking about carnal? Indeed my characters are extreme, but I assure you that these were deliberate decisions. As a political activist, my work cannot be arbitrary. There must be meaning behind the art. It’s an art of changing the way people think, and forcing them to look beyond mainstream stereotypes and cultural differences.

TT: Then what is the rationale behind these extravagant and extreme costumes of such characters as the Mexterminator and Cybervato?

GGP: These alter egos are a creation of the stereotypes of mainstream media and the distorted views of pop culture. And…

TT (cuts in): But then aren’t you contradicting what you just said? Aren’t you simply perpetuating the stereotype?

GGP: No. Let me finish. These characters are more than that. They are human. They are also a reflection of the audience. Often in our shows, we allow the viewers to play with our costumes. We allow them to dress us, mark us, play with us. And they love it. They’re fucking with our identities, and they love it! It’s sad, but that’s what happens.

The media, like the audience, does the same thing. They create and play with the identities of our people, and no one seems to care. We just laugh it off, and make jokes out of it. It’s sad, truly sad, que no?

TT: Perhaps, but why do you have to make art so complicated? Logic is wrong, so don’t even bother. What’s with this putrid mix use of languages? You tend to do that a lot in your work as well. It’s hard to understand half the things you say sometimes, with all the Spanish you fuse in there.

GGP: Well, that’s partially the point ese. At any given time, there will be people in the audience who get what is going on, and there will be those who don’t. We want everyone to experience this idea of partial exclusion. We want them to know what it feels to not be included. It’s like creating a border, just like the one between the US and Mexico. I feel this is an essential part of human existence, and necessary to understanding what it means to be Chicano or any minority group.

I believe language is what diversifies our world. It brings people and their cultures together, to create a new impurity from the old impurities. Nothing in this world is pure, and that’s alright because all sorts of great things come as a result of it. Consider the Mexican, a mix of the indigenous of the no-so New World and the Spanish of the Old. Likewise, performance art is the marriage of theatre and conceptual art. Language allows us to be open to new ideas and influences, and brings even more variety to our patchwork planet. Punto.