Faculty of Arts and Letters mentor Nerisa Del Carmen Guevara, a Resident Fellow of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies (UST CCWLS), performed recently at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, during the seventh edition of LAPSody, an international festival organized every two years by Master of Arts students in Live Art and Performance Studies (LAPS).
The duration piece that Guevara performed was one of the twelve chosen performances to be featured in the festival out of 88 proposals by performance and live artists from around the world. Her durational piece titled “Elegy 8: The Pacific Ocean” was the latest instalment of her Elegy Series begun in 2013. Her “Elegy Series,” and her much shorter “Infinite Gestures” present themselves as an ongoing lyric sequence in space generating the polar energy of loss.
Guevara joined performance and live artists from France, Australia, Bangkok, Indonesia, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Czech Republic, and Norway in interacting and collaborating with local Finnish Artists in a three-day exploration of “Signatures,” the theme of LAPSody 2019.
Guevara has exhibited her installations and performance pieces at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and other spaces. She has received a Palanca Award for Poetry, a Catholic Mass Media Award (Special Citation), and a Silver Cup for Dance Solo in the April Spring Festival in Pyongyang, North Korea. A featured Southeast Asian performance artist, documentation of her “Elegies” and “Infinite Gestures” are currently in the archives of The Live Art Digital Agency (LADA), London. Guevarra has performed for the Philippine International Performance Art Festival, Solidarity in Performance Art Festival, PERFORMATURA, the 49th NeMLA in Pittsburgh, Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, New York, International Rain Festival in Solo, Indonesia.
