“The Museum of Fetish-ized Identity,” a collaboration between performing arts students and the group La Pocha Nostra, opens tonight at the Reilly Center.
Officials in Music and Dramatic Arts said the museum contains explicit nudity and strong language and is intended for mature audiences only.
As a “living museum,” the piece surrounds the performance art in a museum-like setting, allowing those who attend to walk around the participants and observe, said theater associate professor Nick Erickson.
“It’s like a museum, except the people will be on the platform and will be the objects you look at,” Erickson said.
Guillermo Gomez-Pena, artistic director of La Pocha Nostra, and his two collaborators, Juan Ybarra and Michelle Ceballos, worked with LSU performing arts students for the past two weeks.
At a lecture last week, Pena said his work exaggerates mythical notions of culture using a highly aestheticized environment.
Jose Torres-Tama, a performance artist from New Orleans, said the exhibition is a multisensory, multistage, disjointed narrative with the action happening simultaneously.
“It’s like Epcot center, but twisted, gone wrong,” Torres-Tama said.
He said the performance explores a racial dynamic by taking particular taboos to create a dialogue about what is happening in society.
The students localize stereotypes in relation to the South, he said.
For instance, an African-American student will dress up as a voodoo priestess, assume ritualistic poses and try to lure white men over to shine her combat boots with a Confederate flag, Torres-Tama said.
“We take a stereotype and twist it so that it takes on a political message,” he said.
As many as 15 students will perform at the same time, and the show will use lighting, fog, music and video to enhance the experience.
“We are inviting others to come and experience the cultural ‘other,'” Torres-Tama said.