Elyla

Elyla

Chontales, Nicaragua

Elyla is a performance artist, researcher and activist from Central America, Nicaragua. Their work deals with creating resistance to colonial, imperialist, and western ideologies around the construction of identity politics and nation-state cultural narratives, specifically as it relates to mestizaje, queerness (cochoneidad), and indigenous ancestry.

Most Known for...

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Prayer for Tending Death 2024

A queer performance for transforming violence into healing. A traditional dance and its costumes to counter colonial legacies. A peaceful ritual for diluting the imposing masculinity of the cockfighting arena, their sharp damaging spurs, their intense cigar sucking. The Nicaraguan multidisciplinary artist Elyla, amidst masks and fumes, creates a purifying and festive prayer, a serene ceremony of alternativity for tending death.
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Torita-encuetada 2023

In the single-channel video performance Torita-encuetada (2023), Elyla engages in an anticolonial ceremony that evokes liberation from oppression through a fire-lit ritual inspired by the Nicaraguan cultural tradition of toro encuetado, where a bull-shaped frame filled with fireworks is carried through a festival during a ritualistic dance.