Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro, Davia Spain
About This Artist
Javier Stell-Fresquez (Chican@, Tigua & Piro Native), Ivan “Ivy” Monteiro (Brasil), and Davia Amerasu Spain (San Francisco Bay Area native), compose a trinity of young, fierce, POC femme artists. Our collective expertise spans theater, sound and video production, dance, and organizing, as well as drag, among other forms that our queer ancestors developed in queer nightlife spaces, and backyard family barbecues.
Applying intersectional and intertribal methods, we set our triune gaze on the landfill that is our present society. Holding up umbilical and ancestral knowledge as we decolonize the future, our very existence and emergent voices defy neocolonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.
Mother The Verb is a Queer/Trans performance dance, produced and created by Ivan Monteiro (Brasil), Javier Stell-Fresquez (Chican@ originally from El Paso, Tigua & Piro Native), and Davia Amerasu Spain (San Francisco Bay Area native), a trinity of young, fierce, POC femmes fucking up post-colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy one breath at a time. This trinity will be making a new experimental performance piece exploring the glorification and damnation of our many mothers, asking how we can transcend the toxins flowing in our bodies and societies.
The Artist Talks About His Upcoming Performance of FRE!HEIT with Michelle Jacques Get tickets now at www.counterpulse.com/fre-heit “I felt I was lacking freedom, but I couldn’t find out what made me feel so unfree,” performance artist and co-founder of Shifts– Art in Movement David Brandstätter tells me about the inspiration behind FRE!HEIT, his evening length work that […]
Inspired by ancestral, community-centered, and spiritual relationships to land and plants, [and then we must be] by Audrey Johnson is a research and ritual project honoring Black American practices with land and plants through the modes of food, farming, rootwork, and magic. The work honors the practices that get passed down through recipe, spell, and story, as well as the memories active and activated in the body, plants, the land (soil, clay, mycelium, strata), and in spirit.
Paying homage to Black American spirituality and African Diasporic rites of community, the 2022 CounterPulse Edge program presents [and then we must be] by Audrey Johnson and, in partnership with Afro Urban Society, Mixtape of the Dead & Gone #1- Egwu Onwu Ahamefula by Nkeiruka Oruche + Gbedu Town Radio. This year’s Edge performances invite the audience into conversation with the land, spirits, the afterlife, and the legacies that inform the rituals and practices around them.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — CounterPulse is proud to be unveiling the new light sculpture titled “Elektra” on the façade of our building at 80 Turk St by the award-winning art and design studio FUTUREFORMS. The installation of this world-class public art installation marks the summit of CounterPulse’s current capital campaign to purchase their building in […]
“Traditionally, in Igbo cultures, we have had death as part of the conversation. We understand that life doesn’t end when you die. Ancestors are part of our life connection and day-to-day practice.”