We are very pleased to announce the new District Studio Grant holder Maque Pereyra.

Maque Pereyra is a Berlin based artist, performer, djane, dancer and spiritual activist. In 2018 she finished the MA SoDA program at UdK-HZT. A DAAD scholarship in the field of performing arts was granted to her from 2016 until 2018. In her home country, Bolivia, she obtained a BA degree in Psychology in 2014. Her work has been shown in different festivals and venues internationally e.g. region(es), New York (2019), WHOLE. United Queer Festival, Ferropolis (2018). She has been awarded twice with the arts award Premio Plurinacional Eduardo Abaroa (2013-2014). She’s currently working on spreading the practice of yoggaton – a movement practice developed by her.

At District, Maque will work on her research on Yoggaton as Empowerment and Decolonial Body Practice from September 2019 to January 2020. Through an analysis of Yoggaton’s multi-layered impact radius, she aims not only to gain a better understanding of the meaning of body knowledge in the context of colonial processes and the colonial relationships between body and spirituality, but also to reflect on the sexual connotation and colonial suppression of certain body movements. In doing so, she questions binary structures and their relationship to the colonization of bodies as well as the subversive use of reggaeton music with its explicit sexual content. The research is intended to support Yoggaton’s creative processes and generate intersectional knowledge between body decolonization, healing strategies, empowerment discourses and decolonial aesthetics.

www.yoggaton.com
Maque’s Instagram
Yoggaton Instagram

The Studio and Research Grant 2019/2020 on Yoggaton as Empowerment and Decolonial Body Practice is a project by Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, District * Schule ohne Zentrum, sonntagsbureau at Amerika-Gendenkbibliothek Berlin and the publishing house Zaglossus. The project is funded by Senate Chancellery Berlin – Department of Culture.