While Untitled Art, Houston held its inaugural edition last week, the buzziest art piece wasn’t in the booths, but underground. In a performance that drew raves from attendees and art press alike, artist Lita Albuquerque led small groups into Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a 1926 underground reservoir that once stored the city’s drinking water, for a limited 25-minute performance.
The performance, titled The Sea Is Within Me, starts with Albuquerque inviting people into the entrance of the dimly lit cistern. There, she proceeds to set the scene with some background information about the performance, before locating the audience through a guided meditation within the celestial and earthly planes.
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The performance was rooted in a familiar narrative for the artist, who expanded on earlier works, following a heroine who was sealed away in a coffin and trapped somewhere between life and death. For the piece, she collaborated with her daughter and dancer, Jasmine Albuquerque, and opera singer Carmina Escobar, accompanied by the cello.
Albuquerque then lead the group further into the heart of the cistern. We stood around the perimeter of the cavernous, nearly black space looking down into the shallow water. Suddenly, a high soprano voice echoed through the cistern and, at once, red light flashed on her body. At first, Escobar’s voice was light and peaceful, a comfort from the initial consuming darkness that filled and reverberated through the massive space. Her sound quickly turned to high-pitched wails, however, punctuated by anguished breaths and thrashing movements.
This is when dancer Jasmine Albuquerque appeared, white light illuminating her figure. She was jovial in her movements at first, too, seeming to uplift the despairing voice, in an exchange between the pair. However, as the performance continued, the dancer also experienced clear moments of anguish and fatigue. Her violent thrashing created large splashes in the cistern’s water, then quieted, with no movement at all.
Sometimes the performance functioned more like a call and response between the two, as if they were trading off these moments of joy and despair, while other times the singer and dancer performed together simultaneously like a symbiotic unit carrying each other through each moment. At times, they even wade through the water, seeking each other out, only to separate and come back together again.
The cello further grounded the piece, playing low in the background and at times breaking through for its own melancholic moments.
The piece ends with Escobar facing forward and Albuquerque facing backward, locked arm in arm as they move away from viewers and towards the cello. The pair separate and Escobar continues to move, her soprano voice ringing out, as Albuquerque stands still. The performance ends with the deep drone of the cello as the lights fade out.
It is unclear whether the performers are intended to be separate beings or states of being, or extensions of one in the same. Either way, I’m not sure the distinction matters here. As the pair move through their emotions and physical states of being, both separately and together, they ultimately wade through it. Rather, it seems more prudent that in the struggle, whether internal or external, the effort amounts to something, perhaps even better, on the other side.
The Sea is Within Me accompanied works by Lita Albuquerque on view at the fair with Michael Kohn Gallery.
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