ixchel ( we are still here , remember this medicine )

The Exponential Festival presents Cristina Pitter’s ixchel (we are still here , remember this medicine ), an intimate performance installation and ceremony from January 10-13, 2024 at 2pm & 7pm at JACK, 20 Putnam Ave, Brooklyn. Tickets are $20 and can be found at https://www.theexponentialfestival.org/ixchel.

Ixchel (pronounced Ish-chel) is the Mayan goddess of the moon, love, gestation, textile arts, and most importantly – medicine. Centered on the investigations of being in relationship and balance with the natural world, this new multimedia offering from Cristina Pitter gestures to the tangled paths of re-indigenizing and deracializing of self. Through the use of visual art, song, poetry, and ancestral ritual made new, ixchel is brought to life and shared with genuine heart.

this work is my medicine 

– medicine shared to me by ancestors known and unknown, seen and unseen

– medicine gifted and expanded on native lands that are not mine

– medicine igniting the way home

I am still here. remember my medicine.

Coined “the Off-Off Broadway darling” by The New York Times, Cristina Pitter (they/she) is a queer multi-spirit afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist who wants to burn it all down and plant new seeds in the fertile soil. They also have the best laugh ever. SERIOUSLY.

“She is such a gifted performer… lyrical and thought-provoking work” – The Reviews Hub

You may have seen their work with/at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Pipeline Theatre Company, One Year Lease Theater Company, The Movement Theatre Company, New Georges, The Metropolitan Opera, JACK, The Brick, The Bushwick Starr, Target Margin Theatre, Abrons Art Center, Mabou Mines, Joe’s Pub, The Tank, or Netflix’s Bonding. Follow their antics at cristinapitter.com. @lavidabrujeria

JACK, led by Co-Directors Jordana De La Cruz and Skye E. Kowaleski, is an award-winning performance meets civic space located at 20 Putnam Ave in Brooklyn which presents over 80 theater, music and dance performances a year and holds community conversations on issues of importance to the neighborhood. Their mission is to fuel experiments in art and activism, collaborating with adventurous artists and neighbors to bring about a more just and vibrant society. JACK was founded to create a space for performance that serves as a connection point for multiple communities — a space where individuals from different backgrounds come together, create art, and speak their truth. They see the role of an arts space to also be a community space, and they connect neighbors not only through performances, but also through conversations on issues of importance. jackny.org

Exponential is a month-long January festival dedicated to New York City-based emerging artists working in experimental performance. The participants in this multi-artist, multi-venue festival are committed to ecstatic creativity in the face of commercialism. Exponential is driven by inclusiveness and a diversity of artists, forms, and ideas coupled with utopian resource-sharing, mentoring and the championing of risky, rigorous work in eclectic fields. A pleasure, a mess, a thrill, and a dream. theexponentialfestival.org