This Film will be showing in Block 8 as part of “Las Jefas” Block.
Saturday October 7, 2017 | 8:30 PM – 10:30 PM
Click the button below and select Block 8 to buy tickets for this screening.
Synopsis
Femina-X’s song entitled “Frida’s Heart” has garnered wide appeal for its intimate lyrical content and exciting interplay between vocal climaxes and guitar solos. This music video is a visual representation for exploring a tale of cultural and collective unconsciousness and the embedded nature of personal histories that connect our modern life to the generations of the past. Using the San Antonio River as a sacred geographic site, Daniela engages in a ritualistic self-sacrifice, presenting her own body as gift to the river in exchange for its rebirth. In this way, the sacrifice serves as reclamation for Yanaguana, the waters which nurtured and gave sustenance to the indigenous people of this region long before colonization.
Director Biography
Daniela Riojas is an interdisciplinary artist from the U.S. – Mexico, border of based out of San Antonio, TX; specializing in performance, photography, film, installation, and music. Her work deals in issues concerning reconnection to indigeny, ancient ritual, de-colonization, rediscovery of the matriarch, and investigation of the self. Daniela is the owner of local photography and media business, “ZaaZaa Productions,” voted Best Local Photographer by the SA Current in 2013 and works out of her studio “Studio 111: Daniela Riojas Multimedia Arts” as a part of the Lone Star Art District. She studied English-Creative Writing at The University of San Antonio, TX and also attended the Vermont Studio Center Residency Program in the winter of 2013. She is a Surdna Foundation grant recipient, a former artist-in-residence at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center through the Artist Lab Fellowship Program, and was awarded a grant for Media Arts from the Cultural and Creative Development Department of the City of San Antonio through the Artist Foundation in 2015. Her most recent performance My Well, My Stream, The River, was awarded “Best of CAM” for “most exceptional artwork” during Contemporary Art Month in 2016. Daniela is the lead singer and composer for progressive, fusion band, Femina X.
Director Statement
Daniela Riojas is an emerging Texas interdisciplinary artist currently based out of San Antonio, Texas. Her creative body of work recalls ancient ritual practices and engages seemingly anachronistic couplings of pre-colonial world concepts and contemporary cultural theory. Throughout her creative process her corporeal presence often attempts a locative terrestrial engagement for the sake of her performance narratives. Using her process of, “individuation through embodiment,” Riojas physically places herself in a mode of abstract worship as a way to connect to feminine deities, totems, archetypes, and new mythic characters. The images become vehicles for remnants of a lost spiritual history. Bringing them to the forefront of contemporary art likewise brings along pre-colonial mythologies which can help reconstruct a cohesive and collective consciousness rooted in nature and the understanding of the cosmic female.
