LANDSCAPE
: a night of poetry, film works, and installations exploring identity, materiality, absence, and presence featuring works by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, Julia Lopez, Raúl Romero, and Yarelmi Iglesias Vázquez
April 9th 6pm at Vox Populi, FREE TO ALL
Presented by Philadelphia Latino Film & Arts Festival & Vox Populi
Join Vox and PHLAFF for an evening of exceptional programming in collaboration with two ongoing exhibitions at Vox: Raúl Romero’s "Resounding Thresholds" and Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez’s "Teorías Caseras Sobre Una Isla Flotante."
On view from 6-7pm on Tuesday April 9th, PHLAFF has curated a special film short that expands upon the themes explored in Romero’s and Roca Gonzalez’s installations : “Chimney of Death” directed by Yarelmi Iglesias Vázquez. Natividad, Aldwin and Alberto, residents of the Miramar community in Guayama, Puerto Rico, one of the communities mainly affected by the Applied Energy Systems (AES) coal mine, narrate their daily struggles against the burning of mineral coal, and the use and deposit of toxic ash nearby from their homes.
From 6-7 pm, join us at Vox for this special screening and exhibition viewing. Then, beginning at 7pm, poet Julia Lopez will offer an interactive spoken word performance. Afterwards, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, Julia Lopez, and Raúl Romero, will be available for an audience Q&A session!
ARTIST BIOS
Julia Lopez-she/her is a Theatre Artist and Poet. She Graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Attended the Eugene O’Neill National Theatre Institute, her last year of undergrad was spent in Madrid, Spain. She was a member of Las Gallas-Latina Women's Artist Collective for 14 years, performing & facilitating workshops throughout the USA, Cuba, Spain, & Mexico.
Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary maker and educator working in collaboration with their family. With the use of multimedia installation and live plants, their work examines intimacy, family narratives, Cuir (Queer) Ecology, and how we carry the land's inherited colonial structures through personal imaginaries and the dualities of the everyday. They have been awarded numerous residencies, including the University of the Arts iLAB residency, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts, and Feminist Art Collective Artscape. Their work has been screened or exhibited internationally including at Taller Comunidad La Goyco (San Juan), Temple Contemporary (Philadelphia), as part of Caribbean selected screening at Documenta Fifteen (Kassel), and Hessel Museum of Art (New York).
Raúl Romero is a Puerto Rican-American Artist based in Philadelphia, PA. He works in sound, sculpture, installation and performance.
Born in el calentón caribeño: Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1994. Based in Bayamón. Yarelmi Iglesias Vázquez is a qualified and professional sound person with three years of experience in production sound mixing and audio post-production. Passionate for narratives, storytelling, documentaries and sound. The director of Chimenea de muerte (Chimney of Death), a short doc about the fight of a community for better health and living conditions. They have worked as a A collaborator and as a sound person in different fiction, documentary and podcast projects with Filmes Casa, Leo Leo Libros, Sierra Club PR and other independent filmmakers and activists.