Documentation: New Ngam

Chloe Martinez y Santi Muerte was a live performance at La Choloteca, a queer latinx dance party in Atlanta, Georgia. Yoli performed and embodied two of their cousins and personas: La Curandera Chloe Martinez and the Diosx Santi Muerte. During the performance, La Curandera Chloe Martinez opens the party by leading the audience through a ritual to be born in the light and darkness of Santi Muerte. This ritual involves praying together to invite Santi Muerte to mount Chloe Martinez’s body and spirit as a way to transfer the blessing to everyone present. It uses kitsch, tropes of mestizo abuela medicine practices, and technologies of ceremony to reflect on consent, patriarchy, and the postcolonial ceremony practices of the de-indigenized peoples of the Southwest, Turtle Island, and Abaya Yala; beings of mixed cultural traditions due to shifting borders, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, nationalism, colonization, and globalization.