Starting with a semiotic performative that states ‘this is not a performance,’ this lecture/performance is another turn of the screw of RenéMagritte’s ‘this is not a pipe’ and Fernando Muñoz’ ‘this is not a cow.’ The relationship between performance and art tradition intertwines witha constant interpellation of the audience, blurring the boundaries between art and life. In the Q&A, Maris Bustamante renders her understanding of what non-objective arts are, and how gender roles can perform in art. A juicy conversation about her trajectory includes insights about gender and sexuality, feminist art, maternity, and her work with Polvo de gallina negra and No-Grupo.

Maris Bustamante is neo trans post conceptualist strident visual producer. Since her first happening in 1971, Maris Bustamante (1949, Mexico)— a graduate from the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura La Esmeralda at Mexico City—began ‘a search for non-traditional support’ or what shecalled ‘non-objective art.’ In 1977, along with other artists, she started a movement of ‘savage vanguard’ called ‘No-Grupo.’ With No-Grupo Bustamante created humored and caustic performances where gender was a major source material. In 1983, Bustamante and Mónica Mayer founded the first feminist art collective in Mexico, Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Powder) -a name based in the popular belief that black hen’s powder is a protection against evil eye or, in this case, attacks against feminism.