Elyla Seed Awards recipient
Themes
- Racial justice
- Indigenous rights
- Gender equality
- Free expression/civil society
- Sexual/queer expression
- Reexamining history
Disciplines
- Photography
- Artistic Research
- Dance
- Film
- Performance
- Theater
- Video Art
- Visual Art
Country
- Nicaragua
Elyla is a non-binary performance artist and activist from Nicaragua. While their artistic background is rooted in theatre, it has evolved to broadly encompass LGBTQ+ activism and community organization. Their work deals with creating resistance to colonial, imperialist and western ideologies around the construction of identity politics and nation-state cultural narratives, specifically as it relates to mestizaje, queerness and indigenous ancestry. Elyla is committed to researching how decolonial reflections can lead to a community-based anti-colonial artistic praxis in Central America.
Elyla has presented their work for New York University at The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Encuentros in 2014, 2016, and 2019. They've also shown work at IX/X Biennial of Nicaragua, IX/X Central American Biennials, and the XII Biennial of Havana, Cuba. Elyla is the co-founder of Operación Queer, a collective that blurred the limits between academia, art, and activism creating interventions in Mesoamerica.
