La Indigena

La Indigena is part of a trilogy of performances based on a fictitious indigenous woman that Katiushka embodies. The costume is made of used kitchen rags, bags of onions, burlap rice sacks and any waste left from store bought produce. La Indigena collects all the most used, abandoned, back of the drawer piece of underwear with most history, most wear and tear. She collects and wears all the women’s underwear she knows, she wears their stories, their pain, their happiness, their moments. She separates all the underwear in color coordination and puts them all on creating a chastity belt of sorts, one on top of the other, compressing the circulation in her legs. It is difficult to walk, but she carries the burden of these women, she carries the stories of marginalized indigenous women. She cleans the sand with zen like motions, continuously and repetitively falling into trance, forgetting the pain and hardship she is carrying. She carries a sack of sand of one part of the combed beach to the other side and builds a mountain, a symbol of earth and femininity. Then she slowly walks towards the ocean releasing a pair of underwear, a story untold with each step until all there are no more and ends entering the ocean.