Roberto Sifuentes

Professor, Performance

robertosifuentes.com

Roberto Sifuentes has been teaching at SAIC since 2008. He took his sabbatical during the AY2022–23.

Roberto Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary performance artist and educator. His recent projects include #exsanguination. As co-founder and longtime member of the San Francisco-based performance troupe La Pocha Nostra, Sifuentes spent over 25 years performing and leading workshops at more than 800 venues across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Latin America. He has co-authored two books with Guillermo Gómez-Peña, most recently Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy (Routledge, 2011).

As a performance pedagogue, Sifuentes has served as Artistic Director of the Trinity College/La MaMa Performing Arts Program in New York City and as Eminent Scholar in Latin American Studies at Columbus State University in Georgia. He is currently Professor and Chair of Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sifuentes is a Collected Artist in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Education

BA, Trinity College, Hartford CT

Notable Classes Taught:

Crossing Borders
Extreme Bodies in Performance
Tactical Performance

More info:

Sidedoor: “Bloodsuckers” (Smithsonian Institution Podcast)

Sabbatical Reflection

During my AY 22/23 sabbatical, and after a long absence due to the pandemic, I returned to Mexico for an extended five-month period of research and reflection.

While in Chiapas, I continued my embodied research into pre-Columbian Mayan art and imagery. We traveled to the archaeological site of Yaxchilán to study its iconic lintels and to investigate pre-Columbian practices of bloodletting and sacrifice. Human sacrifice has long been part of the folklore surrounding pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and some anthropologists have proposed that these ceremonial acts functioned as forms of performance.

My research in Mexico explores sacrifice and the bleeding body—ancient and contemporary, ceremonial, medicinal, and spiritual. This investigation informs new images and performance tableaux—living portraits in which the performer morphs between iconic figures representing those often called leeches in our society.

In my performances, the leeches—and the dramatic flow of blood they incite—become a ritual of performed sacrifice, creating space for resistance, witnessing, and healing.