Performance with 25 mariachi musicians serenading each other at the Redland Market Village, a weekend flea market in South Florida frequented by the Central American migrant community. Culminating performance supported by a Locust Projects Wavemaker (Research & Development) grant and an Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award supporting research and travel in Guadalajara and San Antonio to the two largest mariachi events in Mexico and the United States respectively. Through this process investigating how the tradition continues to be shared, the project arrives at one central question: who serenades the serenaders? The musicians always play for an audience but they don’t experience what they help others feel. In turn, I provide two directions to the group: play for each other and ignore the audience around you. Through this simple mechanism, they are confronted with what they usually are just a vehicle for, and in many cases, they cannot make eye contact and have to look away from each other. Intention transforms action, even if repeated mechanically, when an intention is set, the same gesture will not be received in the same manner.
Similarly, by having the musicians facing away from the audience, it marks that there is a different presentation at play. Generally mariachi is effusive and celebratory, and so it is not easy to arrive at nuance or a deeper reflection. Denying the audience that interaction suspends that typical engagement and makes room for a critical reading of the performance.
The work can further be read as a reflection on colonial legacy, miscegenation, and Mexico’s own history tracking the migration of communities from rural to urban areas but I now posit mariachi as a wider vehicle for love and affect, and something that elucidates why it has such a deep resonance even with audiences outside the tradition and in some cases event without speaking Spanish.
For reference to inform a proposed presentation as part of the Arte Laguna Prize exhibition, the “Auto-Mariachi” performance series continues with a showcase along the Venetian canals in October 2026. I have engaged regional musicians from Milan for this presentation and they have extensive experience working regularly with the Mexican Consulate in Italy. With this in mind, I propose a 15-minute serenade performance for Arte Laguna with 10 musicians and can configure the presentation in a flexible manner. I feel confident in the success of the project as I will have an understanding of local collaborators that can be readily invited for this opportunity. Furthermore, I have coordinated similar presentations working with over 100 individual musicians since 2019 across Miami and Mexico City, both in public spaces and institutional settings.
