Indie Grits exhibit showcases portraits and videos of LGBT community

Santiago Echeverry is more than an artist. He’s an activist. An immigrant. A proud LGBTQ supporter. A Fulbright scholar. An educator. And he’s one of the many accomplished artists being featured as part of the 11th annual Indie Grits festival hosted by The Nickelodeon Theatre.

This year’s theme of “Visiones” focuses on artists who art to convey aspects of the Latinx (the gender-neutral alternative to Latino) diaspora experience. Echeverry’s exhibit is an exploration into the LGBTQ community through a distorted three-dimensional lens. Think drag queens, go-go dancers, bartenders, artists, DJs and nudists in the abstract.

Go Columbia spoke with the artist about his work, which is much deeper than 3D.

Q. What inspired you to create “Cabaret”?

A. The precursor of the Cabaret was a 1993 video piece entitled “Last Night a Transvestite Was Killed,” where I am becoming a drag queen, incarnating the thousands of anonymous transgender sexual workers that had been murdered in Colombia.

Q. What was the hardest part about creating these pieces?

A. The hardest part was the human component. Trying to find collaborators, talking and presenting an idea that was so abstract that it was not easy to explain. The second hardest part was to record my collaborators in their natural settings, documentary-style. Finances have been very tough, and without the help of Indie Grits, this show would have never happened.

Q. How did the participants react when they saw the finished product?

A. They were all in shock! They can see some of the results in real time during the shoot, but after the editing and printing processes are done a few weeks later, they are in awe, pleasantly surprised.

Q. How long did it take to create the images and videos?

A. It took me around one month of straight work and tests. I went through every single frame I produced to select the outstanding ones for printing. It is a lengthy process, but so rewarding.

Q. How did you connect with the Columbia Museum of Art? Indie Grits?

A. There was an open call for projects in one of the websites creators like me consult for exhibition and festival opportunities. Indie Grits’ Visiones open call immediately attracted me, because they were interested in the experiences of immigrants in the United States. The deadline for the proposal was the date I became an American citizen, after immigration ordeals that lasted over a decade. It was the sign that told me it was a good idea to submit my proposal to the selection jury.

Q. What feeling would you like people to walk away from the exhibit with?

A. A sense of beauty! How amazing it is to have to fill in the blanks between the lines to create your own image at the end. The people that I am presenting in my project have tough moments like we all do, but when they are in the Cabaret, they shine. The Cabaret is not necessarily a physical space – it has become a state of mind – where the invisible fourth wall that separates the audience from the stage gets blurred and more undefined. We carry the Cabaret wherever we go.

Related: Indie Grits embraces Latin American food, film and art

This story was originally published March 30, 2017 at 10:51 AM with the headline "Indie Grits exhibit showcases portraits and videos of LGBT community."