El Reguero

El Reguero constitutes an in-progress repository of 25 plus years of performances, actions, experiences, interventions, audios, writings, and other creative gestures generated by Nicolás/Dumit. This archive reveals itself, one entry at a time, as opposed to a complete endeavor launched all at once.

Reguero in Spanish means a chaotic collection of objects and things; a big mess. In the case of this online archive, its name references a store in Santiago, Dominican Republic, where Nicolás was born, and which was characterized by its seemingly disorganized inventory. The store sold from mosquito nets to flower vases and to chamber pots. This was before globalization and 99 cents shops. The story goes that one day two donkeys roaming the city met at El Regero and made love among the messy rows of goods for sale.

USA Paradisiaca / Super Merengue / Las Frutas Tropicales / The Fountain of Youth / Recuento de mis 15 / She tans. He sails. She swims. He surfs. She shops. He dives

Super Merengue

I invite the audience to join me on a dance flight that does not require an aircraft. SM (Super Merengue) is a character I created who leads an existence both here and there, as well as in the void that links both places: the air space between the U.S. where he claims citizenship, and his place of birth: the Dominican Republic. Performed at Temple University Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Dixon Place, New York, NY; and the Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ. Documentation of this performance has been exhibited at El Museo del Barrio and Longwood Art Project/Bronx Council on the Arts, New York.

More: In the mid ’60ss, when a shift in U.S. immigration policy granted a higher quota of visas to many “Third World” nations, including several in Latin America, a considerable number of Dominicans began to emigrate to the United States, especially to the New York City area. A segment of this population became part of a transient community that relied on the services of an expanding aviation industry to make it possible for it to call both places home. Washington Heights soon established itself as the epicenter of this culture, with neighborhood stores catering to it by carrying summer goods year round, while an array of communication businesses in New York and the Dominican Republic urge customers to purchase beepers and cellular phones, and promise to deliver flowers, messages and money to either place in a matter of hours. Super Merengue, the character in this performance, is the by-product of an American Airlines-traveling line of ancestors. SM has successfully evolved into a sky-dwelling creature no longer dependent on airplane turbines to satisfy his need to fly. As such, SM single-handedly functions as the captain and flight attendant for his innovative way of traveling. 

To access a New York Times review, click HERE

Las Frutas Tropicales

A life-size diorama provides the environment that I assemble on stage to transport the viewer for fifteen minutes to the tropics for a show-and-tell lesson on fruits done in Spanish. The audience is invited to learn the names, sizes, colors and properties of these items, and to eventually experience the gradual collapse of the relationship developed between themselves and the performer, as well as of the representation of the tropics as paradise.

Presented at Dixon Place and P.S. 122, New York, NY; and Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, NJ

The Fountain of Youth

The legend of la fuente de la juventud (the fountain of youth), revived as a transportable display, offers a store-bought cocktail served by an attendant clad in Speedos. Hawaiian Punch gushes from tin cans to fill champing goblets, while visitors supplied with disposable cameras ensure the preservation of the fountain’s sweet spurts beyond their momentary life span. Guests are invited to toast. The fountain will flow while supplies last.

Presented at The Bronx Museum as part of Artists in the Marketplace (AIM), 2001

USA Paradisiaca

USA Paradisiaca is a video originally created as part of a performance of the same title. This piece was commissioned by Queens Museum in Flushing, New York for an exhibition curated by Valerie Smith entitled Crossing the Line. The piece was one of a group of site-specific projects that took place outside of the Museum’s facilities and in the community. In USA Paradisiaca I host a comprehensive presentation on the plantain at a restaurant while performing in collaboration with the staff. Guests join regular patrons of a Latine restaurant in Queens to sample what to many of them is “the other” in a dinner consisting of five dishes made out of a subtropical fruit, the plantain. In this piece the plantain and the immigrant are interchangeable subjects of a visual/edible presentation that warns the audience to watch out for the indelible stains that can result from handling this specimen.

To access New York Times review on this video click HERE

Recuento de mis 15

Formatted as a traditional Latina/x quince años, a coming-of-age ceremony, this piece consists of an exhaustive audio-visual presentation performed collaboratively by an artist, a curator, a gallery coordinator, a flower person, a theramin player, a waiter and group of invited guests.

For this occasion, the gallery space is furnished with a portable projection screen and a lectern where the curator, dressed in black, reviews the development of the debutant’s career. Recuento de mis 15 looks at professional roles and questions the established art world’s (Art Industry’s) methods of validating an artist’s work. Those present are invited to delve simultaneously into the private and the public, the institutional and the personal, and into what might be real and what is being staged. Guests at this event get an inside look at Estévez’s upbringing as well as his education, exhibitions, awards, residencies and rejection letters through a presentation that includes detailed projections of his then five-page resume.

Semi-formal attire was suggested.

Theramin player: Micahel Evans / Flower person: Lina Beltré / Curator: Edwin Ramoran / Special thanks to Carl Eckhoff

Presented at Bronx River Art Center (BRAC)

She tans. He sails. She swims. He surfs. She shops. He dives.

I produced a series of postcards portraying a utopian vacation spot. Images of glittering days and enthralling nights in a tropical paradise are assembled out of plywood, flip flops, lifesavers, floaters, Speedos, towels and goggles. This souvenir is constructed as an accordion of photographs that unfolds unto an all-you-can-take buffet of pleasurable choices.  With unlimited leisure at one’s disposal, applying suntan lotion and hosting a frozen piña colada promise to be the only demands on you during your stay at my leisure-soaked resort.  

Produced and printed with Lower East Side Printshop as part of their residency program

Exhibited at Jersey City Museum as part of Tropicalisms: Subversions of Paradise, 2007, an exhibition curated by Rocío Aranda Alvarado

To access curatorial essay on Tropicalisms: Subversions of Paradise click HERE / To access New York Times arcticle click HERE