Artist Dorian Wooden embraces her ‘bizarre outsider perspective’

Lately, L.A. artist Dorian Wooden has been contemplating how artists are sometimes requested to “tick off packing containers and dangle our familial, particular person and ancestral traumas in entrance of the world to see as a way to be taken critically as artists.” Her work, whereas grappling with a present of melancholy, finds an area in between.

A musician, efficiency artist and singer who has carried out in museums and artwork areas throughout L.A. and world wide, whereas additionally releasing a number of albums and music movies, Wooden’s inventive method involves an apex in “Canto de Todes (Track of Everybody),” a durational music efficiency and set up opening at REDCAT on Feb. 3. The 12-hour efficiency consists of three actions: an hourlong stay chamber music efficiency; a 10-hour immersive expertise with prerecorded compositions, intermittent stay music and projections; and an hourlong cantata. The ultimate motion, “La Hill,” pays homage to Wooden’s Costa Rican-Nicaraguan household. Collaborators embrace Michael Corwin, cellist Adrián Cortés, vocalist Carmina Escobar and vocalist Roco Córdova.

“Canto de Todes” additionally nods to people music’s potential to create familiarity but additionally name for social change; artists resembling Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Mercedes Sosa and Inti-Illimani have impressed Wooden through the years.

“I’m somebody who actually embraces the concept that even in that darkness, there might be huge celebration,” says Wooden. “I imagine that quite a lot of Latinx cultures actually embrace that — the concept that we will cry and snicker heartily in the identical breath. The songs and the tales that we share with one another all come from that form of actuality.”

Dorian Wooden’s connection to music stretches far again into her childhood. Her grandfather, Costa Rican pianist Calasanz Alvarez, hoped to turn out to be a music professor when he arrived within the U.S. However as a result of not having the suitable accreditation, he labored within the mailroom at USC. That didn’t cease him from enrolling Wooden in music courses by means of the college, the place Wooden says she performed in a piano recital at 5 years outdated.

However at age 10, Wooden began to push in opposition to the standard method to piano, quitting the instrument for a while as a type of revolt. But, she knew she may sing.

“Since I used to be introduced up actually appreciating classical music as the very best type of music, I figured that the very best pursuit that one may comply with as a vocalist could be opera,” says Wooden.

After her dad and mom break up up, Wooden’s mom raised her and her sisters as a single mother; the household moved to Costa Rica, the place Wooden attended an arts highschool and targeted on theater. Efficiency grew to become an important a part of the artist’s life.

“I used to be chubby, awkward, effeminate. So all of these items meant that simply sitting very nonetheless in some way made me very completely different than everybody else,” says Wooden. “At that time, I made a decision to make use of that to my benefit. I discovered that theater was a method to mix each the voice and the bodily presence.”

Wooden’s household finally moved to Florida, however Wooden relocated to L.A. at 17, briefly dwelling together with her father earlier than getting her personal place in Los Feliz.

Wooden says her mom’s defiant spirit and frank method to discussing the U.S.’s historical past of oppression with the artist as a younger age served as an enormous inspiration. Her mom typically informed her: “No agaunates nada” (which interprets roughly to “don’t put up with something.”) That ethos felt much more vital in Wooden’s early maturity, as she started to embrace her queerness and gender fluidity.

“There was at all times this bizarre outsider perspective that I initially resented and have realized to simply embrace because the totality of who I’m and what my voice is,” says Wooden.

After a number of semesters at Los Angeles Metropolis Faculty, Wooden spent her days making music on a boombox and beginning bands — finally “falling in with the improper crowd.”

Now, Wooden lives in Eagle Rock together with her husband, a house they’ve been in for a little bit greater than a decade. She’s been an artist in residence all over the place from Texas to Spain, and her oeuvre consists of quick movies, stay performances, varied albums and EPs, video installations and unique compositions. The artist’s not-safe-for-work 2013 music video for the observe “La Cara Infinita,” that includes Eddika Organista, gained main consideration throughout the web upon its launch, with greater than 60,000 views at this time. The video stars a nude Margaret Cho defiantly standing on a pedestal as Wooden holds two male nude figures between her arms. Wooden brusquely grabs one of many males; one other shot exhibits one in every of them making an attempt to flee.

The dedication at the start of the video (“for j. deitch”) may ring a bell. The observe took as its spark the dearth of male nudity (solely feminine) on the 2011 Museum of Modern Artwork gala through which Wooden carried out as a part of Marina Abramović’s curation of stay singing heads and our bodies on the gala tables.

Over time, Wooden has remodeled songs — calling them covers appears too reductive — by up to date names resembling Fiona Apple, Sia and Prince. Lots of the artist’s YouTube movies function feedback, in English and Spanish, that body Wooden’s work as heartbreaking and chill-inducing.

Folks music additionally performs an vital position in her inventive growth and course of. A 2015 efficiency contains a slowed-down, minor-key rendition of “Caballo Viejo” — a Venezuelan people music written by Simón Díaz — with a further verse together with strains like “caballo le dan sabana y sigue vivo el cabrón / el rey por la mañana aún se cree muy matón / al dar su espalda a la familia / ha perdido la razón.”

Her 2016 efficiency of Juan Gabriel’s “Yo No Nací Para Amar” at Human Assets efficiency area takes the music to operatic heights; Wooden’s palms shake with emotion as sweat drips down her face. A chamber music homage to Chavela Vargas, “Xavela Lux Aeterna,” toured from 2019 to 2020, with stops in Spain and Mexico Metropolis. And in 2020, Wooden launched the albums “Ardor” and “Reactor,” the results of her residency at Human Assets, which included recording periods with guitarist Michael Corwin. Lots of the tracks got here from a single take, lending an urgency and rawness to the albums, which Wooden described as “love letters to activists, medical employees, and repair employees all over the place.”

The recorded audio in Friday’s efficiency of “Canto de Todes” options layered vocals that may be at turns cacophonous and haunting. Wooden offered a four-hour preview in 2019 at Etopia Centro de Arte y Tecnología in Zaragoza, Spain, the results of a six-week residency. She envisioned the set up as an area the place the viewers may transfer round freely, quite than feeling obligated to remain in a single place.

“That’s one thing quite common in elitist mentalities that drive the artwork world — in case you don’t observe a sure sort of composure, then this world is just not for you and also you’re not welcome,” says Wooden. “I’ve at all times been in defiance of that.”

Wooden hopes “Canto de Todes” will tour, giving extra audiences an opportunity to step into the set up, with every area and social second altering the character of the venture. One theme will stay the identical, although: an surroundings of inclusion and area to put emotions down nonetheless the viewers sees match.

“I detect a common starvation for areas that welcome us with that form of uncooked curiosity to specific and share and embody and course of this extremely tumultuous and unsure time that we’re nonetheless dwelling, in so some ways,” says Wooden.