MacArthur Fellows Program

Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Writer and Interdisciplinary Artist | Class of 1991

Title
Writer and Interdisciplinary Artist
Location
San Francisco, California
Age
36 at time of award
Area of Focus
Theatrical Arts
Published July 1, 1991

About Guillermo's Work

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, theorist, and performer, whose works promote intercultural understanding and dialogue.

Gómez-Peña uses the U.S.-Mexico border as a metaphor for the borders within our identities as defined by race, sex, class, and nationality.  He explores U.S.-Mexico relations and border mythologies through the use of multiple mediums: performance, installation, video art, audio art, bilingual texts, journalism, and digital technologies.  He is the author of six books: Warrior for Gringostroika (1994), The New World (B)order (1996), Mexican Beasts and Living Saints (1996), Codex Spangliensis (2000), Dangerous Border Crossers (2000), and El Mexterminator (2002).

Biography

Gómez-Peña founded the multidisciplinary arts organization, La Pocha Nostra, in 1994 and currently serves as its artistic director.  He also co-founded the Border Arts Workshop (1984-90), a binational group of artists who focused, often through experimental art, on the cultural and political relationships between Latin America and the United States.  His performance, installation, and video works have been presented at over seven hundred venues around the world, including the Tate Modern, London, the House of World Cultures, Berlin, and the Chopo Museum, Mexico City.

Gómez-Peña received a B.F.A. (1981) and an M.F.A. (1983) from the California Institute of the Arts.

Last updated January 1, 2005

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