MARTHA HINCAPIÉ CHARRY Decolonial Curator - BIPoC Artist / Embodiment / Ecofeminismus / Movement / Research / Ritual / Dance

Colombian BIPoC artist 

Decolonial curator

Choreographer / Performer / Researcher  

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Bogliasco Foundation Fellow 2022

Watermill Center artist in residence 2021  

Tanzpraxis recipient 2020

Pina Bausch Fellow 2019 

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Martha is since 2011 artistic director of Plataforma/SurReal Berlin: Ibero-American Festival for Dance, Performance, Installation and Screendance. She collaborates as curator with the Dance Bienal of Cali, Colombia, REDIV the Ibero-American network of Screendance Festivals, Barazani Berlin and resident curator at La Sierra Artist residency. Martha was  was 2021 & 2022 associate curator at Radial System Berlin.

Her body of work in recent years has been based on indigenous wisdom related to climate change and extinction. She has been sharing with diverse native communities several  practices related to ceremonies as well as approaching traditional ecological knowledge, shared by elders, that build cross-cultural and trans-indigenous bridges.

In her praxis she has delved into the embodiment of ancient technologies, in dialogue with the current geopolitical situation, through mediums such as dance, performance, video/sound installation, screen-dance, photography, documentaries and festival formats.

Through a transdisciplinary reflection of bodies, Martha opens a space of dialogue between continents in which the themes of climate chaos, the relationship between humans/more-than-humans and the visible with the invisible world find a platform. Her work is dedicated to the decolonization of conventional artistic practices, structures and spaces.

Hincapié Charry has created several unlearning spaces dealing with underrepresented and excluded BIPoC (black, indigenous and people of color) expressions and struggles.

In 2021 she premiered the first part of the trilogy HECATOMB at EDEN Berlin and in 2020 the solo/performance AMAZONIA 2040 at DOCK11 Berlin.

Martha got her MA Art in Context at the UdK Berlin and studied Dance in her homecountry and finished her studies in Dancetheatre and SoloDance at the Folkwang University Essen, Germany, under the guidance of Pina Bausch, with teachers such as Lutz Förster, Dominique Mercy, Stephan Brinkmann, Juan Cruz Díaz de Garaio Esanola and Malou Airaudo.

She danced for the Wuppertal Dance Theatre, Münster State Theatre, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Aachen Theatre and performed in various independent productions. Her own creations have been invited to Festivals in Europa, Asia and the Americas. She has been awarded with several prizes and scholarships. Martha founded in 2007 the Colombian - German group PERIFERIC.

Her piece “Autorretrato con Máscara – Self-Portrait with Mask'' was realized with the support of the Spanish Foundation IBERESCENA, obtained the Prize of the Audience at the Festival 100° in Berlin, Sophiensaele 2009 and was selected as the best piece of the season 2009 of the theatre R101 in Bogotá. "Autorretrato..." was nominated for the National Dance Prize 2010 of the Colombian Ministry of Culture. After teaching in Colombia, Martha started working in 2008 as assistant choreographer in Community Dance projects for Josef Eder, Royston Maldoom, and Rhys Martin, among others with the Berliner Philharmoniker and with homeless kids at the National Theatre in Bucarest, Rumania. She worked in Berlin, with the project TanzZeit – Dance in Schools.

2010, her creation “The Second Time in Between”, was produced with the Einstiegsförderung of the Berliner Senate and the Berliner Theatre Dock11. Her choreography "To Die For" had premiere at Sophiensaele Berlin in 2011.

She was guest student of the MA Choreographie of the HZT – Ernst Busch in Berlin.

2012: her piece "Transparente" was coproduced in Bogotá together with the company Danza Común and the Cultural Ministry of the Colombian government. 2013: choreographed the theater piece "Angst" directed by Volker Lösch at Stadttheater Basel in Switzerland, and got the Tanzstipendium of the Berliner Senat. "Transparente" her first full length film celebrated premiere at the American Dance Festival / International Screendance Festival and toured in Europe and South America. She created “Backwards 7” a solo performance exhibition for the Berliner art gallery Musterzimmer.

2014: Martha developed “Doble-Faz” the graduation piece for the 5^th year contemporary dance students of ASAB – District University of Bogotá, supported by the Goethe Institut Colombia. She performed at ADA Studio, LaborGras and Tanzfabrik and gave the body training for “Human Requiem” by Jochen Sandig with the Rundfunkchoir. 2015 her solo “Self-portrait with Mask” was invited to the National Museum in Bogotá.

2015/16 she danced with Teodor Currentzis / MusicAeterna and Sasha Waltz & guests at Radial System Berlin, performed Alexandra Pirici´s “FLUIDS” at the Berlin Art Week, and participated with her practice/workshop HEARTS at the Performing Arts Festival and Plataforma Festival in Berlin.

In 2017 with the support of Iberescena she realized an artistic residency with México´s national contemporary dance company: CEPRODAC. Martha performed again for Alexandra Pirici in “Aggregate” at the art gallery Neuer Berliner Kunstverein N.B.K. She worked with Robert (Bob) Wilson and the Rundfunkchor for the production "LUTHER -dancing with the gods-" in the Pierre Boulez Saal. She also performed a solo for the exhibition "PURPOSE" by Reza Miraby at the art gallery Kunstsaele Berlin and directed the Performance Project of the Tanzfabrik Berlin where she shared her practice/workshop HEARTS with the participants. Her solo ANTHROPOMORPHA was premiered at Dock11 Berlin.

Martha developed a duet with the Syrian/Palestine refugee dancer Fadi Waked in Berlin and Potsdam with the support of Radial System and Fabrik Potsdam. The duet was commissioned by Zuni Icosahedron and presented at the Cultural Center of Hong Kong in the frame of the Festival and Forum One Table Two Chairs.

2018 started in Colombia together with Sabine Zahn and the research/laboratory Walk, Sense Talk at La Casona De la Danza with the support of IDARTES and the Berliner Senat in Bogotá.

Martha created a new piece for the CEPRODAC, the national contemporary dance company of México: “IXNEXTIUA”, in coproduction with the ministry of culture of Colombia, she performed “Sitting on a Man´s Head” By Okwui Okpokwasili at KW for the Berlin Biennale and received the Recherchestipendium of the Berliner Senat.

From  2016 to 2018 she was a Mentee of the LAFT´S Performing Arts Program, PAP, in Berlin.

In 2019 she premiered in Berlin as choreographer and performer the piece HYBRIS together with the collective La Quinta del Lobo at Radialsystem. In 2020 she performed for Asad Raza in the frame of Down to Earth at Gropius Bau Berlin.

In 2021 she made part of the jury of the Theather Spektakel Festival in Zürich, Switzerland.

Martha speaks Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese and German.       

"HECATOMB II - Integration: movements and rituals for the renewal of the world" by the Colombian BIPoC choreographer Martha Hincapie Charry, brings together 3 First Nation leaders from the so called Americas (Colombia, USA & the Amazon rainforest), who protect and share the knowledge and wisdom of their ancestors and express it through traditional dances, songs, and ceremonies, that sensitise about the current crisis in our relationship with Planet Earth.

In ancient Greece, HECATOMB was the sacrifice of one hundred oxen in ceremonies. Figuratively, "hecatomb" is used to describe the sacrifice or destruction by fire, storm, disease or sword of any large number of people or animals; and also of the wholesale destruction of inanimate objects, and even of mental and moral attributes.

HECATOMB II is a 3 channel video installation + live performance where participants encounter the native leaders. This proposal recognises ancestral indigenous knowledge as a science based on healing technologies that seek the balance of the planet.

The indigenous leaders invited to take part are: 

Petra Gouriyu & the Arralia community, Wayúu People, La Guajira Desert

Shane Weeks - Shinnecock First Nation, Long Island NY

Aimema Úai - Muruy Muina People, Amazon Rainforest 

The video installation is available to be looped for as long as necessary in a format where viewers can move freely in the exhibition space, which can be a gallery, museum, black box, or outdoors in places such as a botanical garden. 

The exhibition space should allow the spectators to get barefoot and be in contact with soil or grass.

The creation is based on eco-somatic and ecofeminist perspectives with a focus on Planet Earth, the Earth as a woman. A woman who has been subjected to extractivism and the abuses of corporations, the biggest drivers of climate change.

The proposal attempts to decolonize stage practices by creating a space for reflection on the relationship of humans with nature and the consequences of everyday actions in terms of the disappearance of habitats, species and groups of native inhabitants, as is still happening, to give just an example, in the 8 countries to which the Amazon rainforest belongs. 

"HECATOMB II - Integration: movements, and rituals for the renewal of the world" takes action, focusing on the knowledge that indigenous peoples protect 80% of the world's biodiversity, even though they make up only 5% of the world's population. 

This second part of the trilogy aims to open a dialogue between ancestral cultures, visions and wisdoms, unfolding the possibilities of digitisation, immateriality and preservation of ancient wisdom, documenting endangered rituals/ceremonies and movements/dances in a performance/documentary format. 

HECATOMB II revolves around the messages from three communities from the Colombian desert, the USA Long Island in New York and the Amazonia rainforest on the scenario of the video installation, intervened with a live performance by Martha Hincapié Charry, taking a stand and raising awareness about the current spiritual crisis. 

The three native leaders share, from an autobiographical perspective, about their origins, their communities, their struggle for survival, and their efforts to defend and protect nature and its spirits from new forms of colonialism, such as multinationals, corporations, the burning of the rainforests, the destruction of sacred species, or extractives practices such as mining in sacred lands. Part of their struggle is to perform tribute offerings to the earth, which are meant to create balance and harmony between humans and Planet Earth. 

The leaders perform ancestral dances and music associated with these offerings and interact through four different rituals and ceremonies associated with nature spirits. 

This is the second part of the trilogy HECATOMB. The first part was premiered in Berlin in 2021 at EDEN. The trilogy asks questions about the contemporary crisis of the human- nature relationship. It dares to make a statement about interdependence, mutuality and togetherness, and represents an attempt to embody and reimagine our role in the world. 

Indigenous population are underrepresented in European culture. More than ever, the knowledge of the ancestors of these communities is relevant to survival on a global scale, to the possibility of having a future that is not destroyed by disconnection from nature, which is the cause of the current chaos, which can lead to the Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction: an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch as a result of human activity. 

Artist and curator Martha Hincapie Charry has already opened a reflective space in Berlin that focuses on underrepresented but relevant indigenous and PoC cultures, particularly the current context in which pandemics emerge from the disappearing habitats of which they are guardians and protectors: the Plataforma Berlin Festival. With focus on the amazon rainforest, the last time it took place on 2019 at Radialsystem, Dock11 and Verlin Studio.

The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cites “ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism” as drivers of vulnerability to climate change. A crisis that disproportionately impacts BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) around the world. Communities that have fought this struggle and aren’t given center stage, on the contrary are often even punished for it. This proposal wants to open a window as an alternative to racialized global capitalism: indigenous sovereignty. 

Ancestral rituals/ceremonies are not only threatened by the recent SARS-COVID19: the catastrophe goes beyond the economic and psychological, as the pandemic threat deprived us of a collective ecstasy that alleviates the pressures of exhausting routines. No matter where we live, we are all connected to nature, coexisting in interdependence. We are interconnected. What happens in nature affects us all, directly or indirectly in the medium or long term. 

"HECATOMB II - Integration: movements, and rituals for the renewal the world” is supported by National Performance Netz - stepping out - and Barazani Berlin. 

Premiere: Berlin, August 2020

The solo performance AMAZONIA 2040, developed during the pandemic,  reflects about the present, past and future of the Amazonia rainforest and explores the expression and resistance of concepts such as home, habitat and inhabitants in times of climate crisis, activism and disappearance of biodiversity.

Amazonía 2040 is an exciting solo by Colombian choreographer Martha Hincapié Charry. Her Quimbaya indigenous roots make her narrative about the condition of the Amazon particularly compelling.  In duo with a 12 meters video installation, she provides vital information about the state of the Amazon region and about some of its indigenous communitie that are seriously threatened by environmental destruction.
Images of the rainforest, portraits of indigenous peoples, contextualization in places like Chiribiquete and personal storytelling come together in a celebration-meditation; a layered performance that becomes an intimate ritual.

Amazonía 2040 is a celebration of the region and its contacted and uncontacted communities. Excellently developed and executed, numerous striking images confront the viewer with the deterioration of the sacred habitat. Video projections of expanses of plastic and trash in contrast to a large panorama of the region, to give just one example, create a pervasively disturbing effect.

What will be the state of the Amazon rainforest in 20 years? How do political landscapes influence our relationship with nature? What can we learn from ancestral cultures to renew our relationship with Planet Earth? AMAZONIA 2040 addresses these questions in a personal way.

DURATION: 50 MINUTES

The performance is available in English or Spanish

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Director / Choreographer / Performer: Martha Hincapié Charry

Special Guest
Miguel Yauenku Tikuna
Video installation
Liliana Merizalde & Sebastián Rosas - La Vuelta al día 
Sound design
Brendan Dougherty / Samaquias Lorta
Lighting design
Asier Solana
Photos of Nukak women: Joana, Monica, Buma, Chrisi & Monica
Federico Rios Escobar
Photos of Chiribiquete
Jota Arango
Supporting images
Juan Vivescalle
Footage Pirá-Paraná
Macuna Community, Niels Halbertsma
Costumes / harness piece
Federico Polucci
Dramaturgy consultant
Paul White
A production of Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin, Fachbereich Kunst und Kultur / Dock11 / Plataforma Berlin
In collaboration with Fundación Herencia Ambiental: Carlos Castaño Uribe, Procat Colombia: José F. Gonazalez Maya & Diego Zarrate

Thanks to La Sierra Artist Residency.

A CEPRODAC, México - Ministry of Culture, Colombia coproduction.

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Premiere: 2018, Centro Nacional de las Artes, México City.

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IXNEXTIUA was a pre-hispanic Aztec ceremony, during which women and men were transfigured into animals.  Throughout the night the gods danced together with them.

IXNEXTIUA is the second part of the trilogy – Thoughts About the Anthropocene – which seeks to generate a space for reflection by looking at the past, present and future of humanity, as well as its relationship with nature. The bodies of the 7 dancers  make a journey towards the articulation of the visible with the invisible, of their animality with their most mystical side.

It's a requiem for an extinct world that strangely looks a lot like ours. 

The first part of the trilogy, ANTHROPOMORPHA -jaguaring-, was premiered in November 2017 in Berlin. The trilogy asks questions about nowadays crisis in the relationship humans - nature.  It dares a statement on interdependence, mutualism and togetherness and is an attempt to embody our animality and to re-imagine our place in the world.

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Choreography: 

Martha Hincapié Charry 

Creation/Performance: 

Ana Paula Ricalde, Bryant Pineda, Claudia Olvera, Guillermo Magallón,  Jairo Cruz, Luis Ortega and Marlene Coronel.

Live Sound:

Juan Pablo Villa

Length:

70 minutes

Premiere: DOCK11 Berlin 2017

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 ANTHROPOMORPHA -jaguaring- is a physical dance/performance solo with I.ruuu? on the sound.

In intimate sessions I interact with the spectators and they become part of the landscape of the piece. The performance, with an autobiographical point of view, sharing about my Quimbaya indigenous roots, takes them across time and space. I guide them to embody the figure of the jaguar and to articulate their animal side.  The  narrative of the piece researches into a place of interaction to find a connection between animality and humanity as a starting point for a reflection focused on biodiversity under the light of imminent extinction.

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ANTHROPOMORPHA -jaguaring-  takes a look at the past-present-future of humankind and its bonding to other (animal)bodies, rethinking our impact in the world and reflecting about what it is to be a human being (dis)connected to ancestral wisdom.

The solo is the first part of the trilogy – Thoughts About the Anthropocene – which asks questions about nowadays crisis in the relationship humans - nature. The second part of the trilogy, IXNEXTIUA, premiered in May 2018 in Mexico City as a coproduction of CEPRODAC Mexico and the Ministry of Culture of Colombia. The trilogy dares a statement on interdependence, mutualism and togetherness and is an attempt to embody our animality and to re-imagine our place in the world.

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Creation/Performance:

Martha Hincapié Charry 

Live sound:

I.ruuu?

Length:

40 minutes

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With the support of: Iberescena, CEPRODAC México, Goethe Institut Bogotá, Nicola Campanelli, Federrico Polucci, Fadi Waked
Thanks to: ProCat Colombia, Carlos Castaño Uribe, Diego Zarrate, WWF, Periferic Berlin / Bogotá, Uferstudios, Plataforma Berlin Festival

A piece about connecting

Premiere: Ada Studio - Uferstudios Berlin 2016

“A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement ... Polka dots are a way to infinity.” Yayoi Kusama

#DOTS is a puzzle, a deceptively simple game where connecting has never been more challenging. Inspired in video games, social networks and the work of Yayoi Sukama, #DOTS pretends to connect the spectartos with the decision making and the staging process. With #DOTS all bodies will become part of the enviroment, creating it together for 15 surprising minutes.

Creation/Performance: Martha Hincapié Charry 

Belt-Road Cross-cities and Cross-cultural Experiment
Traditional Maestri ╳ Contemporary Artists ╳ Emerging Artists, Cultural Center Hong Kong 2017

The Belt and Road cities are a colourful reserve of history. Meanwhile, global modernisation and popular culture have brought renewal and transformation to these cities. In 2017, the maestri and young artists of traditional and contemporary art forms from the Belt and Road cities convene in Hong Kong to carry out exchanges through their creative works, including theatre and dance, staged with the setup of One Table Two Chairs concept adapted from Xiqu (traditional Chinese theater/opera). These artists conduct demonstrations and solo performances in a theatre cladded with mirrors on four sides creating infinite reflections and experimentations between the traditional and the contemporary.

The Belt and Road maestri in both traditional and contemporary performing arts, teaming up with emerging artists, brings Hong Kong four distinctive performance programmes, creating solo/duet and workshop-led short pieces.

DUET

Creation/Performance: Martha Hincapié Charry & Fadi Wacked

GROUP PIECE

With students of the educational program of Zuni Icosahedron

Premiere: Musterzimmer Galerie, Berlin 2013

Backwards 8 by Martha Hincapié Charry, include 8-sets dinner created by Cristiane Egger. Backwards 8 is a private  encounter, limited for 15 persons.  During the evening  you´ll go through an intimate, autobiographical performance by Martha Hincapié Charry, which challenges the perception of time and ends up us all having dinner togethe.

Backward is a relative direction. The most common relative directions are left, right, forward(s), backward(s), up, and down. No absolute direction corresponds to any of the relative directions. This is a consequence of the translational invariance of the laws of physics: nature, loosely speaking, behaves the same no matter what direction one moves. As demonstrated by the Michelson-Morley null result, there is no absolute inertial frame of reference.  Relative directions aloud us to move towards life, to make choices, to relate and to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) vulnerability, mutability. By changing directions, we fight and struggle, testifying how time relentless melt. By slicing out a moment, freezing it, we are compelled to understand that life and its phenomenon are inaccessible and that as time goes on everything vanishes. But, are be able to walk our path again? 

Creation/Performance: Martha Hincapié Charry Dramaturgy: Davide Camplani .

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Martha´s  curatorial body of work, has been based on indigenous perspectives related to ancestral wisdom, ecological chaos and extinction of biodiversity. She has been sharing with diverse native communities from the global-south several  practices related to ceremonies as well as approaching traditional ecological knowledge, shared by elders, that build cross-cultural and trans-indigenous bridges.

In her praxis she has delved into the embodiment of ancient technologies, in dialogue with the current geopolitical situation, through mediums such as dance, performance, video/sound installation, screen-dance, photography, documentaries and festival formats.

Through a transdisciplinary reflection of bodies, Martha opens a space of dialogue between continents in which the themes of climate chaos, the relationship between humans/more-than-humans and the visible with the invisible world find a platform. Her work is dedicated to the decolonization of conventional artistic practices, structures, minds, feminismus, bodies and spaces.

She has been exchanging in-situ with indigenous leaders, artists and activists mainly in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. In Brazil with Guajajara, Xakriabá and Xukurú communities, in Colombia with the Tikuna, Muruy Muina, and Wuitoto communities in the Amazon rainforest, also in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with Mamas - the Arhuaco, Kogi and Wiwa spiritual authorities, as well as in the Guajira desert with the Wayúu community. In Mexico with the Wixarika and Zapotec community and in the USA with the Shinnecock community, among others. 

Hincapié Charry has created several unlearning spaces dealing with underrepresented and excluded BIPoC (black, indigenous and people of color) expressions and struggles.

She is founder and curator of the independent festival Plataforma/SurReal in Berlin, dedicated to reflect intersectionally around the body through live arts and mixed media. Plataforma/SurReal celebrated 8 editions where artists and activists from the Abya Yala, Spain and Portugal found a highlighted place in Berlin. Plataforma/SurReal reimagine (de)colonial processes and the forms of survival that artists have experienced in their migration to Europe or as part of local utopias. 

In this frame she facilitated thoughtful spaces such as the podium "Please do disturb: climate disruption, dance and activism" to which she invited Sônia Guajajara (nowadays, first minister of the indigenous peoples of Brazil), Denny Neves and Carlos Castaño Uribe.

2021 and 2022 she was associate curator of ENCOUNTERS at Radialsystem Berlin, where she summoned Zapotec artist Lukas Avendaño, Brazilian choreographer Thiago Granato and shared her proposal foRest -slow medicine-. A book documenting the ENCOUNTERS program process and its focus on embodied practices was published in 2023. 

She was invited on 2021 to curate at Tanz im August Festival the online segment “Happy to Listen” to which she invited artists and activists Lian Gaia of the Cariri and Manaó people, and Shane Weeks of the Shinnecock people, to share their artistic approaches, struggles and political achievements. 

She has been curator of dance, performance and screen-dance at the Cali Dance Biennial in Colombia in 2021 and 2017. Since its creation in 2013, the Cali International Dance Biennial has managed to bring together more than 3750 dancers from different parts of the world in 205 activities and performances distributed in more than 20 open and closed spaces in the city in a program accessible to all citizens.

She has been curator of the Iberoamerican videodance network REDIV. Currently, the allied instances include 23 international festivals, 3 academic projects and 10 independent collaborators. The Red Iberoamericana de Videodanza, is a network of managers, researchers and artists that works transversally through various projects and actions of curatorship, dissemination, training, management, production and research on videodance.

Martha is currently resident curator, as well as coordinator of indigenous projects, linking communities and worlds at La Sierra Artist Residency in La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia and at Barazani Berlin, Germany. The word "barazani" means forum in Kiswahili, among other things. It stands for a space of meeting and discussion, but also for the administration of justice. Thus, non-European concepts are consciously to be in the foreground in the constitution of BARAZANI.berlin. In doing so, the project is by no means limited to the reference to East Africa, but centralizes the perspectives of all those who were and still are silenced by colonialism.

Martha Hincapié Charry´s own work has been invited to festivals, museums and theatres in Europe, Asia and the so-called Americas.