The pandemic brought with it various questions and challenges for all humanity, as well as movement, mutations and migrations, literally and symbolically. What mutations, migrations or disciplinary expansions have some performing artists had as a result of the pandemic in Mexico?  Is it possible to imagine, act and sustain ourselves as a community? What forms of (re)existence emerged?  What was it that was broken and exposed? What needs to be rebuilt in these times? Did the pandemic open the need to reinvent oneself in the search for autonomy of creation?

Moved by these questions, we summon artists who, as a result of the pandemic, had to mutate, migrate or expand their activities to the production of food, to be part of MIGRATION ARCHIVE, A CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE, with the aim of presenting a testimonial landscape about these migrations. The project seeks to trace the expansion or migration of artists to other activities during this health and economic crisis. What were the means to keep creativity alive and to be able to generate a livelihood to resist the situation we are going through?

These are the sixteen artists who make up the testimonies of MIGRATION ARCHIVE, A CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE: Mariana Villegas, Héctor Luna, Paullete Caro del Castillo, Belén Aguilar, Mauricio Rico, Fabiola Uribe, Sabina Aldana, Gabriela Ornelas, Laura Uribe, Mónica Jiménez, Abraham Jurado, Natalia Fuentes, NawXoxitl Ximena Rodríguez, Josué Cabrera, Rosa Landabur and Ilona Goyeneche. 

Laura Uribe is a director, playwright, performer, stage researcher and teacher. She is co-founder of the L.A.S. [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists] together with Sabina Aldana. Her work is characterized by experimenting in the contemporary scene with a transdisciplinary and documentary approach which moves between the intimate micro-political sphere and the macro-political sphere. She has developed various community theater projects in different contexts and taught over 20 workshops and labs of scenic experimentation in Mexico and abroad.  She has participated as a director and playwright in more than 20 stagings at national and international festivals. Among her works are: MARE NOSTRUM (2017) which was presented at the Münchner Kammerspiele, Festival Theaterformen Hannover (2017) and Festival Politik im Freien Theater in Munich (2018). From 2019 to 2021 she is invited as a playwright to the International Playwrights Laboratory of the Berlin Literary Colloquium, the Maxim Gorki Theatre, the New Institute of Dramatic Writing and the Robert Bosch Foundation.

Sabina Aldana is a Colombian-Mexican interdisciplinary artist and visual designer graduated from the Lasalle College Bogotá. She studied Visual Arts at the National University Institute of Arts in Argentina. Together with Laura Uribe, she co-founded the company L.A.S [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists]. She works as costume designer, scenographer and stage director. As costume designer, she has worked with different scenic languages, from children's plays, comedies, adaptations of classical and experimental works to transdisciplinary projects in the Performing Arts and contemporary dance pieces. From 2014–2016 she was costume designer for the resident dance company of the Jorge Eliécer Gaitán theatre in Bogotá and from 2016-2018 costume coordinator for the national theatre company of Mexico. She has worked with many contemporary directors such as Pedro Salazar, Fabiana Medina, Fernando Montes, Carlos Sepúlveda, Carmen Gil Vrolijk, Edén Coronado, Laura Uribe, among others. She has participated as costume coordinator in more than forty works and as costume designer in more than twenty pieces.