performer call - naufus ramírez-figueroa's lugar de consuelo
The Museum of Modern Art seeks motivated individuals to perform Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s Lugar de Consuelo (Place of Solace), 2020, which will be presented as part of a larger exhibition of the artist’s work in the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio from April-July 2026.
The work of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1978) fuses sculptural installation, video and performance. Ramírez-Figueroa’s practice draws from Latin American political activism and experimental theatre, calling into question established and entrenched narratives which have emerged on specific episodes in the recent past. Through the physicality of bodies and staged environments that envisage fantasy and reality, the artist revisits his own traumas and those of a country shaped by colonial extractivism, civil war and the social imbalance of the Indigenous population.
His work has been exhibited at museums and art centres around the world, for instance the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá – MAMBO, Bogotá (2023), The Power Plant, Toronto (2020), New Museum, New York (2018), CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux (2017), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016), Tate Modern, London (2015) and Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2013), among others.
Lugar de Consuelo (Place of Solace), 2020 revisits Corazón del espantapájaros (Heart of the Scarecrow), a 1962 play by dramaturg, poet, and theater director Hugo Carrillo. In 1975, during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war (1960–96), a student production of the play adapted to address political concerns was swiftly shut down by the authorities before the theater was set on fire. Carillo’s original text remains in circulation, but the censored adaptation has not survived.
Imagining what it could have been, Ramírez-Figueroa created a video and performance based on a script developed by frequent collaborator, poet, and writer Wingston González. Like the censored version that used an existing text to address other issues, Lugar de Consuelo is a work of political satire that ponders the absurdity of irredeemable human suffering and irrecoverable loss prompted by perpetual histories of violence. Currently on display at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, this work has been filmed at the Universidad Popular de Guatemala and performed at the São Paulo Biennial and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)—representing unique political implications in various contexts of time and place.
Anticipated schedule consists of approximately three weeks of rehearsal between May 26-June 12, and ~8 performances taking place from mid-late June. Exact schedules will be shared closer to the rehearsal period. This is a paid opportunity and performers must be available for the full rehearsal and performance period to participate.