Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Yanira Castro / a canary torsi, and a team of collaborators, launch a new public art project as an act of intervention during the 2024 Presidential election. With Exorcism = Liberation, the award-winning Castro engages the American public to experience shared concerns and future-building, embedded in Puerto Rican culture and the U.S.’s ongoing colonial history. Born out of the necessity to come together to enact a just collective future, Exorcism = Liberation grounds us in immersive experience and action. Trusting in the power of empathy, the project’s audio experiences offer space for the public to feel and to act while reflecting on difficult questions like: What is the disaster you are preparing for?

Coordinated with a multitude of participating community and arts organizations in citywide collective experiences between July and November 2024, Exorcism = Liberation will have an “on-the-ground” presence in three U.S. locations with strong Puerto Rican diaspora communities. This multifaceted project is stewarded locally by Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, IL; A.P.E. Ltd. in partnership with UMass Fine Arts Center in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts; and a canary torsi in New York City. Exorcism = Liberation can also be accessed on the project’s website: www.exorcism-liberation.net.

Exorcism = Liberation utilizes familiar forms of political media campaigns, placing provocative slogans on the street and mass transit, distributing stickers, posters, handmade banners, lawn signs, and buttons/pins through local community organizations acting as distribution hubs. The slogans reflect the project’s themes:

“What is your first memory of dirt?”

“I came here to weep”

and “Exorcism = Liberation.”

Accompanying each slogan is a QR code leading to an immersive audio experience in which local Puerto Rican performers prompt the individual listener to remember their connection to land, grieve, and conjure a liberated world. Exorcism = Liberation is a call to action, a rehearsal for collective liberation. “It offers a different kind of campaign than the election we are in the middle of,” says Castro. “We want to connect, challenge, spark conversation, contemplate, move, and provoke change.”

Exorcism = Liberation is an extension of Yanira Castro / a canary torsi’s I came here to weep, a multimodal participatory project enacted by the public and supported by Creative Capital.

Installation of posters, lawn signs and banners at Chicago participating hubs
Oct 5
10:00am-4:00pm
Installation of 600 lawn signs along Chicago streets with Experimental Sound Studio, marking the history of Puerto Ricans from Lincoln Park, Logan Square to Humboldt Park. This is a community event in each neighborhood, handing out the project’s lawn signs, and placing them along a map. Light refreshments served. To participate and/or get your own lawn sign: bit.ly/Liberation-Marking (Chicago, IL)

Oct 5—Nov 17
The Honeycomb Network presents, I came here to weep, an interactive exhibit featuring sound, text, papel-maché masks, and photographs from Castro’s body of work on grief, ritual, climate disaster, and the Caribbean diaspora (Chicago, IL)

Oct 5
6:00pm
Opening of the exhibit, I came here to weep, at The Honeycomb Network. The opening includes a listening session of the score, followed by designing and constructing “Grief Wreaths” utilizing medicinal plants and flowers with Denise Ruiz, and closing with a sound bath lead by Chrysalis Collective Member Jasmin, founder of Of the Mother. Get tickets. (Chicago, IL)

Oct 6
12:00pm
Activation of What is your first memory of dirt? with community garden members centering land and remembrance as a collective tool toward liberation at La Huerta Roots & Rays Garden as part of their Autumn Equinox Celebration with refreshments, drum circle with Entera Music & Wellness and a Water Ceremony with Cristina Puzio (Chicago, IL)

Oct 10
6:00pm
Activation of Exorcism = Liberation and Long Table discussion, Art as Civic Ritual, with invited guests Tonika Johnson, Faheem Majeed, Bindu Poroori, and Gibran Villalobos at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago (Chicago, IL)

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Tags: 21c Museum Hotel Chicago, a canary torsi, Bindu Poroori, Chicago, Chrysalis Collective, Cristina Puzio, Denise Ruiz, Edgewater, Entera Music & Wellness, ess, Exorcism = Liberation, Experimental Sound Studio, Faheem Majeed, Gibran Villalobos, Honeycomb Network, Jasmin, La Huerta Roots & Rays Garden, The Honeycomb Network, The Honeycomb Network presents, Tonika Johnson, UMass Fine Arts Center, West Town, Yanira Castro