Rocking Chair Project, a performance at Phantom Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007
A 3 hour-long project involving 5 Latino performers, 5 rocking chairs and the willing public. Audience members were invited to sit on the performers’ lap and enjoy traditional Latin American lullabies and texts by Latin American authors gently sung and read by the performers. The repetitive rocking, the voices, the gentle caring all added to a pregnant and constant murmur… the room turned into a factory of sorts, a container for the labor of caregiving. The project was inspired by the growing flow of women from the global South to richer nations, and their employment as caregivers for the children and dependent elderly. The performance sought a kind of communion with the public as well as a questioning of our notions on labor, an individual’s intrinsic “legality”, and the injustices that documented and undocumented immigrants suffer in our nation.
Part of Migration Studies, curated by Shadi Harouni and Gita Khashabi
