Apariciones /Apparitions is a video by acclaimed Los Angeles artist Carolina Caycedo that reconceptualizes iconic Huntington spaces through Afro-Latinx and indigenous spiritual practices.
Apariciones / Apparitions depicts ghost-like dancers inhabiting the historic Los Angeles landmark, The Huntington Library, Gardens and Art Museum. The brown, black, and queer bodies haunt The Huntington's iconic and traditional spaces–such as the sweeping sculpture-lined North Vista lawn, the Ahmanson rare-book and manuscripts reading room or the Portrait Gallery that houses Gainsborough's The Blue Boy– in sensuous movements informed by the rituals of Oxum, a Yoruba Orisha (or deity) representing water, sexual pleasure, fertility, and love. The body of the dancers, or phantoms, become sources of knowledge, and their gaze holds the viewer accountable, something that is too often missing from history and art; holding space in historically white spaces in ways that they have never been inhabited before.
With: Marina Magalhaes (Choreography), Isis Avalos, Samad Guerra, Celeste Tavares, Bianca Medina, Jose Aviles, Natali Miciche
Cinematography: David de Rozas