“It was a spiritual communion,” says Libertad Guerra, the executive director at the Clemente Soto Vélez. “There was a connection with the audience, and whatever she [Indiana] did on stage, people responded.”
Guerra worked closely with Indiana and Quintero on the performance, which was first commissioned by the Americas Society in 2021 and brought to life during a micro-residency program at the Clemente Soto Vélez earlier this year. “We wanted to make something that was musical, theatrical, and meant to be presented live,” says Indiana.
Indiana’s arrival at the Clemente Soto Vélez continues a long line of artistic and political work that’s held the center as a touchstone of the Latine community in New York City.
“Hybrid” is a term that also describes Indiana’s music, which cruises seamlessly between classic Caribbean genres, like merengue and plena, and spins them into futurist tales of diasporic longing and end-of-times survival. Back in 2010, she released, a 12-track project alongside her band Los Misterios, gaining recognition in her homeland under her alter ego “La Montra.