Lengua, Libertad!

Lengua, Libertad! is a performance in which the artist asks passersby to help teach her Spanish. She then gives her volunteer teachers Certificates of Appreciation, in a symbolic inversion of the norm in which Spanish speakers in the US are stigmatized rather than celebrated. In Campos Plaza, part of the old Puerto-Rican community in the Lower East Side, many locals are bilingual with complex relationships to the Spanish language, their heritage, and position in the US. In each iteration of this performance, the artist tries to acquire the Spanish she needs to investigate questions of immigration and the effect of language skills and barriers on peoples’ lives.