Teresa Hernández : Coraje II

The 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute sought to examine the broad intersections between urban space, performance and political/artistic action in the Americas. From the critical poetics of body art to the occupation of public space by social movements, the event invited participants to explore the borders, identities and practices through which subjectivities, hegemonies and counter-hegemonies are constructed in the spaces of the city and beyond. Courage II is a theater piece exploring urban violence in a country without a declared war, but whose citizens are nevertheless plagued by a paranoia generated by the security sector. This sector forcibly represses the memory of a militarized nation that has been involved in multiple wars, each financed by the arms market. The performance explores our own violence within this global context.

Teresa Hernández is a theater artist with 25 years of experience in both research and practice at the intersections of dance, theater, and performance. Searching for new ways of making, narrating, and being on stage, she conducts comprehensive studies of the body, space, and text. Her work engages identity as a shifting terrain; art and its established canon; and violence and power with its mutiple faces and branches.