Kiyo Gutiérrez

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: Kiyo, it was initially through EMERGENYC and Marlène Ramírez-Cancio how we met, when I presented at the program in 2020. I then became familiar with your ideas when I was a panelist for Franklin Furnace. Your River Healers caught my attention. How was this action born? 

 Kiyo Gutiérrez: First I wanna say I’m honored to be part of your Interior Beauty Salon, Nicolás, gracias for the invitation. I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Next to this city, flows one of the most polluted rivers in Latin America, the Santiago River. Guadalajara citizens cannot touch the river, for the water sickens you, kills you. As a result, we have grown accustomed to a distant relationship with the body of water that sustains us. Out of a desire to relate with this river, to communicate with its waters and to embrace them, I started a site-specific performance project with urban rivers. Inspired by the ideas of hydrofeminism elaborated by Astrida Neimanis, Urban rivers aims to cultivate better ways of living with rivers through different embodied rituals focused on water beings and local multispecies stories around the river. Neimanis argues that “our watery imaginaries directly impact how we treat water, how we think it should serve us, and what we think we can make of it”[1]. In this sense, these performance-rituals, as I like to call them, are an attempt to offer alternatives to our dominant water imaginaries and to build a closer relationship between rivers and citizens.  

NDEREO: Our collective veins and arteries are dying. Let me say this the correct way. We are draining and poisoning our collective veins and arteries. We, and I dare to say we, are staging an ecocide of unparalleled magnitude. Even with the land grabbing and displacement that is occurring at waterfronts around our planet, rivers seem to be seen as lesser compared to oceanfront property and therefore pushed to the back of our imaginaries. No river = No oceans. Would you tell me about the river in the place that call you home?  

 KG: The Santiago River was magnificent. Picture this river flowing over giant cliffs with lots of endemic flora and fauna. There was a majestic waterfall spot once known as the Niagara of Mexico with clear fresh water and plenty of visitors. And now the industrial and sewer stench persists while yellowish foam floats all over. The river may indeed be dying, as you mention, and with it, the communities that live on the river shorelines. Many of its members suffer from respiratory diseases and cancer caused by the river's toxins. The most horrific example of this poisoning, as you rightfully name it, happened in 2008, when Miguel Angel Rocha, an eight-year-old child fell into the river and died from arsenic poisoning. Approximately ten thousand factories dump their toxic waste into this body of water with no consequences. Of course, there is resistance to this ecocide, the families that live near the river have organized to raise awareness about this problem, and to call upon the creation of proposals for a hydrological regeneration and communitarian appropriation of the Santiago basin (organizations like Un Salto de vida). But sadly, these multinational corporations (like the Swiss brand Nestle, the American chemicals company Huntsman and IBM, among many) remain untouched. Impunity, corruption, repression, and power play a big role here. 

NDEREO: Who are the River Healers, metaphorically speaking, and what do they do?  

KG: The River Healers have no fixed identity, they can be entities, energies, goddesses, extinct water species, spirits of dried rivers, you name it. They honor the three matrilineal clans of the Lenape, the first people who lived along the shores of the now called Harlem River. They have the ability to communicate with water through their magical hair, which is dyed with red cabbage, a natural PH indication substance that changes colour when in contact with water. The dye starts out purple indicating a neutral PH. When it comes in contact with non-neutral water, the dye reacts from green when it is alkaline, to red, indicating acidic water. The Healers are also metaphorically returning the Rainbow Smelt to the water, an important cold-water fish that has disappeared from New York rivers completely, due to warming temperatures. If you look closer, you will notice that the extinct fish is depicted in the tips of the Healers' purple hair.  

NDEREO: How was your experience performing on the Wards Island Bridge in New York City? What did the waters reveal?  

KG: I wrote a letter to the Harlem River shortly after the performance. I think in a way it answers your question: 

 Dear Harlem River, 

We come from far, we do not know you, but it is said that water connects, so in a way you are already in us, and we in you. We’ve read about you, admired your shiny rippled surface through a map on a screen, wondering how strong your currents are, imagining the direction of the wind that caresses your skin. 

And now, today, we are here at your shore.  

Your size amazes us.  

Rivers are buried in concrete where we come from. We call them “avenues”.  

We are fascinated to see you like this. A water snake dancing between immense buildings and railroads. But even so, your story is not that different from the stories of our rivers.  

You have also been industrialized, toxic waste spilled into your body, treated like a sewer. You have been redirected, redesigned.  

There are people that believe that you are not even a river.  

We disagree, Harlem. 

But these are all facts that have been observed and written by humans.  

We would like to know more about you, through you.  

That is why we are here today.  

To dip our hair into your watery otherworldly memory. 

You pulled our braids and opened our body, Harlem River. 

Our roots entered your torrents.  

We flow as a river. We are eel, dolphin, algae. We travel through the gills of the extinct rainbow smelt fish. 

Despite this steel bridge that apparently separates us, we weave our threads with your waters. 

We know that you do not serve us, nor do we serve you, for we are ultimately inseparable, always implicated.  

NDEREO: Beautiful. The body is central in your work and in your actions dealing with feminisms and the ecology. Una Habitación Propia, is an example of this. You built a breast-like structure to invite pollinators to come in and find refuge. What is the political and conceptual lineage that connects River Healers to your creative trajectory? 

KG:   The different rituals that engage with each river in this project reflect on what Stacy Alaimo calls our trans-corporeality “the contact zone between human and more-than-human nature”, so I wanted to work within that space as a fertile site of creation, blurring and expanding those boundaries[2]. What gestures and images could help us remember and acknowledge that the water in our bodies is shared water? How can we restore our communication with rivers and their watery creatures? When talking about hydrofeminism, Neimani’s posits that thinking with water and embracing the watery creatures that we also are (and often forget) have the potential to uncover possibilities that are hidden by the colonial legacy and to conjure an ethics of responsibility and mutual indebtedness.  

Regarding water, Lenape Scholar Joanne Barker points out that she approaches water, as many other indigenous women, as a relative, she explains that in indigenous knowledge water has a memory and a consciousness and has the power to heal and transform other forms of life. 

For example, the rarámuri, an indigenous community in Northern Mexico, dances in order to summon the rain, water is seen as a way of bonding with the community and the territory. 

I am also inspired by what Aymara thinker Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui proposes around decolonizing practices[3]. She highlights the act of acquiring knowledge through the body, by listening, observing, and activating from uncertainty, from fragments and with ideas in the making. In a way, all these inspiring ways of thinking were poured into this aqueous performance-based project.  

NDEREO: I could write volumes about Franklin Furnace. They have been here for me for 20 years. They have supported some of the work that I have done when other organizations where focused on trends and what would make their funders tick. How was your first experience with the Temple of the Avant-Garde in New York City? 

KG: Franklin Furnace was amazing. They treated me with such respect and care. It was an honor to present my work with the Harlem River and to be part of the Franklin Furnace Archive, along with many artists I deeply admire. Being a performer that focuses on political and environmental issues comes with its challenges, like censorship and having trouble finding the means to materialize your work. In this sense, this is a unique and special organization. So, here goes to performers all over the world: APPLY! It’s real and it’s happening!  

NDEREO: I could also write volumes about EMERGENYC and the work that Marlène Ramírez-Cancio and George Emilio Sánchez have been doing. Tell me about your experience with this program, one which I do not think has a comparable counterpart at the moment when so much of the art making, even performance art, is about branding and making stuff for the market. 

KG: Let me just say that being part of EMERGENYC cracked open my heart!! (in a good way, of course). I felt heard and nurtured, and above all, I was no longer alone. I was part of a community, and we were all using our creative forces to look at the world differently. I was introduced to experimental creative exercises that nurtured my practice in an innovative way. I really appreciated the program’s freedom to create in a safe space and their focus on an art that transforms and that advocates for justice. To this day, I keep going back to those conversations and loving community.  

[1] Astrida Neimanis. (2016). Embodying Water: Feminist Phenomenology for Posthuman Worlds. In Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (pp. 27–64). London: Bloomsbury Academic. 

[2]  Stacey Alaimo. (2010), Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[3] Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui. A Ch’ixi World is Possible: Essays from a Present in Crisis. Lines, 2023.

All images courtesy of Kilo Gutiérrez

Kiyo Gutiérrez'’s links: Website / Instagram / Vimeo

Kiyo Gutiérrez is a Mexican historian and performance artist currently studying in L.A. (MFA in Art at University of Southern California). She started doing performance art as a reaction against the brutal Mexican reality, which is a violent one full of femicides, disappearances, and a constant and insatiable looting towards nature. Kiyo draws on multiple mediums including video, photography, dance, poetry, textile, sculpture and sound. Ecofeminist, provocative, earthy, political, her performance pieces question established order and power, and explore the ties between female oppression and the destructive exploitation of Planet Earth.

Kiyo performs often in public spaces and has participated in International Performance Festivals and exhibitions in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Spain and the United States. She also participated in Debates, an editorial project for Colección Cisneros, was a recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund, a Fellow at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics of Georgetown University, received the Fulbright Scholarship and was recently nominated for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award.