Elyla participates in Loop Festival with Torita–encuetada at the Fundació Enric Miralles

November 11 – November 22, 2025

Elyla, "Torita-encuetada", 2023. Co-directed by Milton Guillén. Still. Courtesy of the artist.

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Torita–encuetada, part of the TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, is a powerful video work that blends memory, resistance, and ritual. Now on view at the Fundació Enric Miralles until November 22, the piece takes the form of a performance that intentionally can’t be repeated—an artistic choice that questions the usual expectation that artworks should be permanent or easily reproduced. Using distorted framing and immersive sound, Elyla places viewers in a space where familiar colonial symbols are broken open and reimagined through queer perspectives and anti-colonial ritual.

The work draws inspiration from Toro encuetado, a traditional Nicaraguan fire ritual. Here, Elyla transforms it into a ceremony about liberation from colonial history. The name Torita—a feminized, diminutive form of toro—queers a symbol usually coded as masculine, while encuetada, related to being “loaded with fireworks,” evokes both explosive release and personal strength. Together, they point to the potential for deep cultural and personal transformation. As a filmed ritual dance, or mitote, the piece becomes a call to reconnect with earth-based practices and to decolonize ideas of mestizaje, especially around gender and sexual diversity in Mesoamerica.

Made in collaboration with Nicaraguan filmmaker Milton Guillen, and featuring music by Susy Shock and Luigi Bridges, the work brings forward ancestral corpodivinities from Nicaragua’s Pacific region. It invites viewers to experience how culture, resistance, and the sacred meet in Elyla’s practice. With bold clarity, Elyla turns the idea of a “cochón” (queer) utopia into a living, urgent artistic gesture for today.

More information HERE