Payasa (April 2017 - present)
Ongoing collaboration with artist Cindy Popp, in which the pair are two clowns as the only people in the world. “Becoming clowns grants them implicit permission to look and behave in ways others find outrageous. Using photography, they create vibrant self portraits where they boldly insert themselves into isolated landscapes, reframing the viewer’s understanding of spaces that have become rote. Their work is rasquache in nature and cutting in tone, with influences from chola culture, artists from the Memphis Group, and fashion designers like Bárbara Sánchez-Kane. Payasa places viewers in confrontation with its subjects while straddling the line between humorous and haunting.”
The pair has hosted holiday photobooths, led workshops for IMMEDIATE Fashion School, shown a collaborative exhibition at MASS Gallery, and most recently, designed makeup bags for purchase at The Mall in Austin, Texas.
‘Your Presence is Requested,’ MASS Gallery Hotbox Residency in Austin, Texas, summer 2019
Payasa (a collaboration between the artist and Cindy Popp) was selected to utilize the gallery space for two months in whichever way they chose. Payasa built 'Your Presence is Requested', an installation and birthday party, that transformed the gallery into the site of decades’ worth of elaborate, unattended birthday parties thrown for an increasingly absent honoree. The public was invited to witness the clowns perform their party routine one last time with the same unwavering enthusiasm as every year before.
