Performance artists, printmakers invade Studio
The chainsaw roared as the girl with the brain for a head dragged a suited mannequin around the yard. Megaphones crackled and discordant guitar sounds mixed with the pop of a fire in the cool evening air.
A sizeable crowd watched as the girl with the deer on her head wielded a branding iron. Everywhere one looked, there was choreographed mayhem — well, it may not have been choreographed, who knows.
Whatever it was, it was interesting. The Estonian Non Grata performance group returned with to The Studio with their brand of anarchic theater, Nov. 9, as the three-day “Rite of Print” event wound down.
Printmakers Toomas Kuusing and Peeter Allik were on hand to sell their work, as well as student artists from various schools.
Organizer Xenia Fedorchenko, Lamar University professor of print, met the artists and invited them to Beaumont, to show Southeast Texans another view.
Non Grata had been here before — this time there was no styrofoam — and they always challenge the way art can be conceived.
“!Storm Generation!” is just the latest incarnation of their process. With any luck, they will be back again some day. Maybe there’s time to learn Estonian.
ISSUE Magazine – December 2012
Photos by Andy Coughlan