From Dance to Experimental Performance: Jaquez’s Evolution

Jaquez’s artistic journey reflects a deliberate rejection of conventional categorization. While trained primarily in dance, she quickly became frustrated with the limitations of traditional forms. Her pivot to performance art was catalyzed by a 2018 residency at Dave’s Locker Art Space, where she began experimenting with durational works and audience interaction.

One of her most talked-about early experiments was Breathing Room (2019), a 12-hour performance where Jaquez remained stationary in a gallery space, inviting visitors to sit with her in silence. The piece questioned the commodification of attention in contemporary culture, forcing participants to confront their own discomfort with stillness. This work established a pattern in Jaquez’s oeuvre: performances that demand both physical endurance and emotional vulnerability from both artist and audience.

Her methodology is deeply collaborative, often involving months of research and workshops with community members before a piece takes shape. For Borderline Mythologies (2023), Jaquez worked with undocumented immigrants in Arizona to co-create a multimedia installation that combined oral histories with abstract movement. The project highlighted how performance can serve as both archive and activism, preserving stories that mainstream narratives often erase.

• Key Influences: Jaquez cites Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater, Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s border art, and Anne Carson’s fragmented narratives as foundational to her practice.
• Collaborators: She frequently partners with sound designers and visual artists, including Mexican multimedia artist Luis Tapia, who contributed to her 2023 piece Fractured Hymns.
• Performance Style: Jaquez’s work is characterized by its use of repetition, minimalist staging, and an emphasis on the performer’s physical limits as a metaphor for societal constraints.

Themes That Define Jaquez’s Work: Migration, Memory, and Marginalization

At the heart of Jaquez’s practice is an interrogation of displacement—not just geographical, but cultural and psychological. Her Mexican heritage and upbringing in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in East LA inform her exploration of what she calls “the geography of belonging.” This manifests in works that physically map migration routes or use objects like passports and family photographs as props.

In Desert Cantos (2021), Jaquez recreated the journey of a migrant child through a series of durational performances in a simulated desert landscape. The piece used only sand, water, and the performer’s body to evoke the harsh conditions of crossing borders. Critics praised its visceral impact, noting how the scarcity of materials mirrored the stripped-down existence of those undertaking such journeys.

Memory is another recurring motif. Jaquez often incorporates her grandmother’s stories into performances, transforming personal recollections into collective experiences. For her 2022 residency at the Dave’s Locker Performance Hub, she developed Archive of Forgetting, a piece that used decaying objects—old letters, faded clothing—to explore how families transmit trauma across generations. The work culminated in a public burning of these items, a ritual of both destruction and release.

Jaquez’s engagement with marginalization extends beyond her thematic choices. She has been vocal about the lack of Latino representation in performance art institutions, citing statistics that show Latinx artists receive less than 2% of major arts funding in the US. In response, she co-founded Cuerpo Colectivo, a collective that provides resources and performance opportunities for Latinx artists in Southern California.

Breaking Institutional Barriers

Despite her growing acclaim, Jaquez has faced challenges in gaining institutional recognition. When Thresholds premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2022, some critics dismissed it as “too political” for a traditional theater setting. Jaquez responded by staging a series of pop-up performances in unexpected locations—supermarket parking lots, public transit stations—arguing that art should meet audiences where they are, not vice versa.

Her persistence has begun to shift perceptions. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship, which she used to fund Borderline Mythologies. The recognition marked a turning point, signaling that her interdisciplinary approach was finally being taken seriously by the mainstream art world.

What’s Next for Gabriela Jaquez?

Jaquez is currently developing her most ambitious project to date: La Llorona Variations, a multimedia exploration of the Mexican folktale that reimagines the weeping woman as a symbol of generational grief. The piece will incorporate AI-generated text, live musicians, and a set designed to resemble a flooded stage, evoking both the tears of the legend and the literal flooding caused by climate change in border regions.

She’s also expanding her role as an educator. In fall 2024, Jaquez will lead a semester-long workshop at CalArts titled Performance as Protest, where students will develop works in response to current social crises. The course reflects her belief that performance art must be both a mirror and a tool for change.

Looking further ahead, Jaquez has expressed interest in film and virtual reality, seeing these mediums as extensions of her live work. She’s particularly drawn to VR’s potential for immersive storytelling, though she remains cautious about the technology’s commercialization. “I want to create spaces where people feel present,” she said in a 2023 interview, “not just transported.”

Legacy and Influence

Jaquez’s impact is already being felt in the next generation of performance artists. Her emphasis on collaboration, research-driven practice, and social engagement has influenced artists like Los Angeles-based performer Mateo Rivera, who cites Jaquez as a mentor. Rivera’s recent piece We Carry the Dust directly responds to themes from Desert Cantos, using similar durational tactics to explore queer migration.

As she continues to push boundaries, Jaquez remains grounded in the belief that art should disrupt as much as it should comfort. Her work reminds us that performance is not just spectacle—it’s a site of resistance, a space for reckoning, and above all, a way to claim agency in a world that often seeks to erase marginalized voices.