KARAOKE READINGS
Guided by the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, self-described as “chicana dyke-feminist, texana patlache poet, writer, and cultural theorist”, the visual artist Paloma Ayala in collaboration with musician Luna León, reframe Anzaldúa’s poetry into a format that invites to sing along, read together, listen and participate. Gloria Anzaldúa wrote referential texts that shaped post-colonial and chicanx knowledges. Her words described biographical experiences as the lesbian daughter of an agricultural Mexican/US
worker family, and as carrier of generational memories. Many of her texts narrate the Texas border territory as a body of her own, a fluctuating delta landscape that is still vessel of racist and migratory conflicts crossed by queer desires and ghosts.
KARAOKE READINGS is a pedagogical format that wishes to create wide accesses to Anzaldúa ́s
poems and texts, recognizing the importance of embodying her voice and positioning her writings
as a person from the border river and the surrounding delta system.
Paloma Ayala (born 1980, Matamaros, Mexico) is a visual artist whose work takes diverse forms as publications, videos, installations, reading/cooking sessions, and workshops. Paloma´s projects
nourish visions of connection, dreams of emancipation and emphasize practices of care. Her favorite spaces to work range from kitchen to river shore, from international crossing bridge to
agricultural land, from community meeting to aquelarre. Paloma’s work is rooted in her home, the eastern MX/US border landscapes, simultaneously blooming in her current base in Zurich.
The Karaoke readings have been developed together with Luna León, (b.1989,Victoria, MX) a musician based at the MX/US border city of Matamoros. She is a singer and independent composer of a diversity of genres. She holds a Bachelor in Special Education with focus on intellectual capacities and works also as a music therapist, musical coach, and occasional DJ.
Paloma Ayala has been connected with the Shedhalle since 2020 when she was involved in Familienmodelle and later on, when participating in Protozone7: Zones of Kinship, Love and Playbor with the collective River Oracle (2022). She also hosted the front desk for almost two years (2020-2022) during the weekends of ProtoZones2020-2025.
