Until march 29, 2026

Elyla

Corporeal Divinities

 

 

This is the first solo museum exhibition by Nicaraguan artist and activist Elyla (Chontales, 1989). The project brings together over a decade of artistic production, including photography, video, installation, sculpture, and garments used in performances and street interventions. Their practice stems from experiences shaped by the struggles of the cochona community—a Nicaraguan term used pejoratively against homosexual people but reclaimed here as a critical assertion of sexual disobediences and historically abject, despised forms of existence.

In various actions, Elyla disrupts public space to revisit revolutionary masculine traditions and to challenge official history. Their work explores the myth of mestizaje—the ideology of racial and cultural mixing promoted in Latin America—and how it has been used to erase Afro-descendant and Indigenous presence in Nicaragua and Central America. In response, they propose the concept of barro mestiza (“mestiza clay”) as a way to confront and escape its homogenizing logic. In recent works, Elyla interweaves the human, the geological, and the vegetal to underscore the defense of the Mesoamerican territory. From the outset of their practice, they have reinterpreted traditional Nicaraguan dances as celebratory rituals of liberation and collective self-determination.

The term corpodivinidades [corporeal divinities]—coined by Elyla—envisions an intersection of body, desire, and spirituality, rooted in an ancestral search for travesti and sex-dissident kinships beyond the LGBTIQ+ narratives of the global North. The exhibition is part of a broader program dedicated to contemporary Central American art.

 

 

Miguel A. López (Curator, Museo Universitario del Chopo, UNAM)

 

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Elyla (b.1989 Chontales, Nicaragua) is a performance artist, activist, and researcher who explores ritual and communal practices of belief, spirituality, transcendence, and resistance as ways to rupture colonial and rationalist narratives of identity, land, and belonging. Through performance, installation, archival research and ritual, they awaken dormant cosmologies, queer dissidence, and ancestral memory to propose situated, political, and spiritual forms of becoming rooted in Central American histories. Their work is held in the Museum Reina Sofía, Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza TBA21 Collection, Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Ortiz-Gurdián Collection, and KADIST collection. Biennials include Biennale di Venezia (2024), Toronto Biennial (2024), the IX, X Biennial of Nicaragua, IX, X Central America Biennials and the XII Biennial of Havana, Cuba. Elyla is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow by the Institute of International Education (IIE) at Bucknell University supported by the Samek Art Museum. They’ve presented their work for New York University at The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Encuentros in 2014, 2016, and 2019. Elyla is also a Seed Awardee for the Prince Claus Fund 2021 and recipient of the Moving Narratives Fellowship 2024 by the Prince Claus Fund. They live between Masaya, Nicaragua and Basel, Switzerland.

 

Visita guiada

Jueves 14 de noviembre de 2025, 12:00 horas

 

Participa: Elyla 

Performance
San Pedro - Carrera de Patos
Monólogo teatral de Elyla, con música en vivo de Luigi Bridges (Nicaragua)

Sábado 25 de octubre de 2025, 18:00 horas.

Foro del Dinosaurio.

 

Criade en la zona rural de Nicaragua (Villa Sandino, Chontales), le artista Elyla lleva consigo el legado tóxico y persistente del colonialismo en su país. El performance visceral San Pedro - Carrera de Patos, presentado por primera vez en México y América Latina, transforma una tradición colonial y patriarcal en un ritual inmersivo de sanación, tanto personal como colectiva. La pieza propone reimaginar la historia colonial a través de una ceremonia catártica dirigida a la comunidad sexo-disidente. En colaboración con Río - Estudio Jorogumo Shibari.

 

Luigi Bridges Productor audiovisual, técnico en sonido, DJ y docente con una trayectoria marcada por la versatilidad musical y la creación de espacios culturales. Su trabajo conecta la electrónica, la enseñanza y la gestión creativa desde una visión abierta, empática y comunitaria.

 

Río - Estudio Jorogumo Shibari / Putópicas.

Es artista de shibari explora la corporalidad y el derecho al placer, como cineasta realizó el corto "Ejercicio 1: Ella.culación" (2018). Estudio Jorogumo Shibari, es un espacio para el aprendizaje y la experimentación con cuerdas.