Helena Martin Franco: Elephant Woman

3:30 pm - 4:30 pm | Performance

Je suis un tourment artistique, je suis une être composite.
Je suis un freak show hypothétique.

A less-than-human, beyond-the-mythical figure embodies the disappointments rooted in the migrant experience and the hurdles of escaping the stereotypes delineating diasporic identities. Montréal-based performer Helena Martín Franco’s persona, the Elephant Woman, disturbs the space she occupies—the colonial space, an always already violent ground, where individuals and communities are classified within a hierarchical system of value.

The elephant woman arises from a failed affair: that of the migrant and the local, the alien and the native. An inevitable heartbreak, resulting from inequitable power relations traversed by guilt, disenchantment, and taboos burdening a body whose slippery and unclassifiable nature renders it disquieting. Martín Franco embodies a fiction, a chimera, a fantasy that overflows the flesh and spoken language.

The performance will run for approximately 45 minutes.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register in advance.

About the artist

Helena Martin Franco was born in Cartagena. She lives and works in Tio'tia:ke-Mooniyang-Montréal since 1998. She holds an MA in visual and media arts from UQAM. She is a member of several feminist contemporary art collectives, including L’Araignée (collective of diffusion of contemporary art), La Redhada (network of women artists from the Colombian Caribbean), CAVCA (Community of Visual Artists of Cartagena and Bolivar) and Las meninas emputás! (Feminist collective, anti-colonial activist from Cartagena). Her transdisciplinary practice explores the blending of different artistic processes and the hybridization between traditional and new technologies. Her artistic practice invites dialogue about gender-based violence, immigration, and artistic censorship. Winner of the POWERHOUSE PRIZE in 2018, her work has been presented in the Dominican Republic, Lithuania, Spain, New Zealand, Colombia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran, Argentina, Cuba, and Canada.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of our funders, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

LAMAS has been generously supported by the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration Program (CERC Migration) and the WhereWeStand Project at Toronto Metropolitan University; the George Brown School of Media and Performing Arts; The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University; the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University; Hemispheric Encounters; Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design at York University; Performance Studies (Canada); OCAD University; Onsite Gallery; the University of Toronto Centre for Culture and Technology; the Latin American Studies Program at the University of Toronto; the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University; and Lokaal.