Manifestaciones en Periodo de Caza/Demonstration During Hunting Season

In this performance and artist talk, the renowned artistic duo better known as Las Nietas de Nonó will share the visceral motivations of their creative work and artistic practices in recent struggles for equity, visibility, and political change in Puerto Rico and beyond. 

Ilustraciones de la Mecánica takes up the history of medical experimentation and the pharmaceutical industry in Puerto Rico. It considers in particular the violence inflicted on Black women’s bodies in the name of medical research.

Las Nietas de Nonó are sisters Mulowayi (1979) and Mapenzi (1982). They live in Barrio San Antón, a half-rural, half-industrial working-class neighborhood of Carolina, Puerto Rico. Their autobiographical work is framed within the socioeconomic and geographical context of the exclusion and eviction of black communities in Puerto Rico, which includes racial and class discrimination, mass incarceration, drug trafficking, obstetric violence, and the cycle of poverty. Their practice also highlights circumstances and elements that are present in their neighborhood: the expansion of ancestral knowledge, the exchange of produce grown in the neighborhood, and the reuse of materials found in the area to create artistic projects.