Elyla
Torita-encuetada, 2023
Torita-encuetada, 2023
Still: Courtesy of the artist
Collection
Single-channel video, color, sound
9 min 43 sec
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Elyla, a multidisciplinary artist based in Masaya, Nicaragua, reimagines traditional folk practices to question their meanings and the systems of power they uphold. Rooted in performance, video, and installation, Elyla’s practice draws from Indigenous Mesoamerican traditions, queer identity, and decolonial theory, positioning the queer body as a site of resistance and regeneration. In the single-channel video performance Torita-encuetada (2023), Elyla engages in an anticolonial ceremony that evokes liberation from oppression through a fire-lit ritual inspired by the Nicaraguan cultural tradition of toro encuetado, where a bull-shaped frame filled with fireworks is carried through a festival during a ritualistic dance.
Elyla’s title Torita-encuetada is a wordplay that reinterprets this. Torita—the diminutive, feminine form of toro—subverts the typically masculine symbol, introducing a queered and playful reinterpretation. Meanwhile, encuetada, derived from encuetado (“loaded with fireworks”), suggests both explosive liberation and personal empowerment, emphasizing the charged potential of transformation. This wordplay mirrors Elyla’s practice of disrupting power structures by reimagining cultural traditions through a queer, decolonial lens, blending ancestral practices with themes of gender fluidity and resistance. This performance, which brings together ancestral wisdom and contemporary political struggles, serves as a politically charged act of remembrance and resistance, invoking a return to earth-centered spiritual practices and calling for the decolonization of sexual and gender-diverse identities in Mesoamerica.
Collaborating with Nicaraguan filmmaker Milton Guillén, and accompanied by music from Susy Shock and Luigi Bridges, Elyla’s video explores the convergence of ancestral corpodivinities—sacred bodies—originating from Nicaragua’s Pacific region. Their practice, deeply collaborative and grounded in queer and Indigenous cosmologies, transforms cultural rituals into revolutionary acts of empowerment and healing. Dedicated to the late Indigenous Mangue-Chorotega cultural leaders Gustavo Herrera (1954-) and Cristian Ruiz (1977–2022), the work invites viewers into the intersections of cultural memory, anticolonial artistic practice, and the sacred. Through the ceremonial language of mitote (ritual dance), Elyla reinterprets the marginalized and erased as acts of contemporary resistance, blending spirituality with urgent political action to create a space for healing, remembrance, and liberation.
9 min 43 sec
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Elyla, a multidisciplinary artist based in Masaya, Nicaragua, reimagines traditional folk practices to question their meanings and the systems of power they uphold. Rooted in performance, video, and installation, Elyla’s practice draws from Indigenous Mesoamerican traditions, queer identity, and decolonial theory, positioning the queer body as a site of resistance and regeneration. In the single-channel video performance Torita-encuetada (2023), Elyla engages in an anticolonial ceremony that evokes liberation from oppression through a fire-lit ritual inspired by the Nicaraguan cultural tradition of toro encuetado, where a bull-shaped frame filled with fireworks is carried through a festival during a ritualistic dance.
Elyla’s title Torita-encuetada is a wordplay that reinterprets this. Torita—the diminutive, feminine form of toro—subverts the typically masculine symbol, introducing a queered and playful reinterpretation. Meanwhile, encuetada, derived from encuetado (“loaded with fireworks”), suggests both explosive liberation and personal empowerment, emphasizing the charged potential of transformation. This wordplay mirrors Elyla’s practice of disrupting power structures by reimagining cultural traditions through a queer, decolonial lens, blending ancestral practices with themes of gender fluidity and resistance. This performance, which brings together ancestral wisdom and contemporary political struggles, serves as a politically charged act of remembrance and resistance, invoking a return to earth-centered spiritual practices and calling for the decolonization of sexual and gender-diverse identities in Mesoamerica.
Collaborating with Nicaraguan filmmaker Milton Guillén, and accompanied by music from Susy Shock and Luigi Bridges, Elyla’s video explores the convergence of ancestral corpodivinities—sacred bodies—originating from Nicaragua’s Pacific region. Their practice, deeply collaborative and grounded in queer and Indigenous cosmologies, transforms cultural rituals into revolutionary acts of empowerment and healing. Dedicated to the late Indigenous Mangue-Chorotega cultural leaders Gustavo Herrera (1954-) and Cristian Ruiz (1977–2022), the work invites viewers into the intersections of cultural memory, anticolonial artistic practice, and the sacred. Through the ceremonial language of mitote (ritual dance), Elyla reinterprets the marginalized and erased as acts of contemporary resistance, blending spirituality with urgent political action to create a space for healing, remembrance, and liberation.