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Over the last year, conversations about women and women's rights have become significantly more prevalent in our culture. It seems that now more than ever women are telling their stories and having their voices heard. And a local arts festival from the University of Houston strives to celebrate that cultural shift.
The annual CounterCurrent festival (this year dubbed CounterCurrent18) is a multi-day festival featuring lectures, live performances, and audio/video installations with themes driven by women and artists of color sharing their perspectives.
Houston Matters host Craig Cohen learns more about the festival from Karen Farber, director of UH’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, and Laura Gutierrez, a featured choreographer at the event.
- Race Cards takes place in a room containing a thousand questions about race, written by artist Selina Thompson. (Photo Credit: Manuel Vason/DARC Media)
- An exhibition and performance by multi-disciplinary artist Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Kinswoman is comprised of daily screenings of the short film The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios/El peligroso viaje de María Rosa Palacios and a one-night-only Spanish language performance The Poems My Mother Recited/Los poems que declamaba mi mamá. (Photo Credit: Constance Mensh)
- Michael Mercil performs his work, Reading the Daily News. The performance is part of the 2018 CounterCurrent festival. (Photo Credit: Courtesy Michael Mercil)
- International performance artist and UH alumnus, Elia Arce, will collaborate with Houston community members to create a new work in response to the exhibition and ethnographic art project, Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra “Calidad” by Chicana artist and UH faculty member, Delilah Montoya. (Photo Credit: Jorge Cembranos)
- A scene from Bronx Gothic, a film portrait of writer, performer, and artist Okwui Okpokwasili. (Photo Credit: Bronx Gothic)
- During the 2018 CounterCurrent festival, ten choreographers will create ten short dances in one very large space, but for one very small stage: a raised cube with a 4′ x 4′ playing space. (Photo Credit: dabfoto creative)
- Horse Dream Horse is a new work by Cynthia Woods Mitchell/School of Art fellow, Mateo Tannatt, situated at the intersections of theater, scripted performance, art, music video, and sculptural installation. (Photo Credit: Courtesy Mateo Tannatt)
- A new work by the contemporary Houston and New York-based choreographer, Laura Gutierrez, Center Aisle Blues stems from childhood memories of Fiesta Mart and more recent political realizations. (Photo Credit: Amitava Sarkar)
