Interview with Artist in Residence: Laura Anderson Barbata

Life sometimes imitates art. The painter represents what they see and depicts the scene onto canvas. The sculptor uses bronze or marble to form a setting or a person. The photographer takes snapshots of stills from life. In Laura Anderson Barbata’s case, life would have us all on stilts and whimsical garb.Barbata, born in Mexico and based in Brooklyn, is currently the Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence here at the University of Wisconsin. She describes herself as a bicultural, transnational, and transdisciplinary artist. Since 1992 she has worked in the social realm, committed to the development of sustainable art-centered projects that integrate collaborative and participatory work within local communities. She believes that a shared artistic social practice can serve as a platform on which we connect, educate, exchange, create, and transcend borders and nationalities in order to activate our sense of belonging to a global community.Barabata’s intent is achieved by providing a volunteer collaborative work environment in which to create artistic interventions that can provide a need determined by the groups involved and-or can serve as a form of social inquiry and protest.

Her work Transcommunality is an annual project she developed in 2000 with stilt dancing youth and has expanded to include traditional stilt dancers from Mexico, Brooklyn and various communities in the US. The project aims to initiate collaborations to join in public performances. In this way, diverse groups—keepers of traditions—exchange ideas and experiences, and become active co-creators invested in the presentations.

Barbata was also the creator of The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana. This project was a 10-year plight to return and bury the body of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Opera singer. She was not only exhibited throughout her life, but also after her death in an embalmed state. Through the artistic actions of Barbata, the project addressed the rights denied to Pastrana by enlisting the efforts of international institutions, scholars, and scientists in a collective humanitarian goal. It was in 2013 her body was repatriate and buried in Mexico.On May 2 Barbata will invade our streets of Madison with her latest project coined “STRUT!”. She is employing our finest local people, puppets, bright costumes, and stilts to parade downtown. Much like Transcommunality, this specific work aims to initiate collaboration within our community by blending art, dance, music, and design. She is quoted in the Cap Times discussing her residency and her stay in Madison, “The residency is like a laboratory, an exchange of ideas and awareness of each other. We live pretty isolated, and even in a place like this, our lives end up in small circles. It’s important to open up those circles and allow dialogue to happen. We’re going to have an open lecture series every Wednesday, and speakers from different departments. Hopefully, initiating these relationships that can allow a collaboration that will find a physical expression to take place on a processional event on May 2.”.It seems as though that wherever Barbata travels she brings with her the power and passion to connect people. I am personally ecstatic that life has brought her here to Madison and that she didn’t forget to pack her stilts.