On February 26th, 2021 video documentation from Zoom performance Noche Ritual by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo with The Interior Beauty Salon.
Recorded on Zoom, edited by Yoon Cho, 2020 Fall Intern
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo with The Interior Beauty Salon
And with the amazing presence of: Maggie Ens, Luke Dixon, Lisette Morel, Anna Costa e Silva, Quintín Rivera Toro, LuLu LoLo, Elia Alba, Jennifer Zackin and Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve, Linda Sibio, Jean Marie Casbarian, Ikpemesi Ogundare, Ed Woodham, Frances Valesco, Linda Mary Montano, Luis Lara Malvacías, Melanie DewBerry, Erika deVries, Limber Vilorio, Charo Oquet, Ana Paula Cordeiro, Billy X. Curmano, Anna Recasens, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Dulcina Abreu, Rhina Valentin, and Francheska Alcántara.
On February 26th, Nicolás with The Interior Beauty Salon held space online at Franklin Furnace’s The Loft for a group of creatives around the Earth to enact a series of vegan rituals. These micro-actions, carried on from homes from Rio de Janeiro to The Bronx and Puerto Rico, are intended to invoke healing —personal and collective—, serve as catalyst for inner and outer balance, and induce co-regulation as the night blossoms. The evening develops as a succession of gestures, some homeopathic while others more cathartic, that are given birth one after the other. Noche Ritual contemplates the possibility to perform art as refuge at a time of planetary sorrow and several concomitant pandemics brought forth by Covid-19: systemic racism, sexism, ageism, and the urgent ecological plight that we face as a species, among others. This event coincides with Nicolás’s 54th birthday. It also sends him off into the delicious unknown in the months and year(s) to come. Bring a blanket, a fruit and a knife to peel it. Blessings.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nicolás, Anima, 2006
Pilgrimage from sundown to sunrise at MacDowell, Peterborough, NH
Featuring:
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo treads an elusive path that manifests itself through experiences where the quotidian and art often overlap. From 1998-2000 he studied with Coco Fusco and has received mentorship from Linda Mary Montano, a pioneer figure in the performance art field. Estévez Raful Espejo holds degrees in art and theology. Born in Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite, a citizen of the Bronx in 2011. www.elmuseo.org/office-hours
The Interior Beauty Salon was launched by Nicolás in 2017 in The Bronx, NY, to serve as a space where that which is not necessarily seen or manifested in tangible ways, is seeded, nurtured, and given room to grow safely. This includes processes of melding art, ritual, ceremony, rites of passage, and healing. The Interior Beauty Salon was born out of the urgency to re-shift the focus from the external and the extraneous in contemporary society and instead to place attention on the very depths of who we might ultimately be. www.interiorbeautysalon.com
