Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers


Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Mimesis of Mimesis’, 2016, performance, presented as part of If I Can’t Dance’s Finale for Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015 – 2016), Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. Photo: Florian Braakman.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Mimesis of Mimesis’, 2016, performance, presented as part of If I Can’t Dance’s Finale for Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015 – 2016), Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. Photo: Florian Braakman.


Thursday 24 November 2016


‘Mimesis of Mimesis’


9pm / Event and Duration Finale / If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution at Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam

Mimesis of Mimesis (2016) is the fourth work in the cycle of new performances by Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, in which he attempts to exhaust his interest in the Guatemalan Civil War as the recurring subject of his practice. Using his body and direct action, Ramírez-Figueroa creates an image related to this history, which he approaches from his lived experience and memory and softens through abstraction. The performance asks questions about duration in terms of the persistence of history and its relationship to the social and individual body. The performance took place within rooms of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, which was established as an institution for the worldwide study of tropical cultures. The performance was accompanied by the presentation of the video works of two other performances within the cycle, Illusion of Matter (2015) and Life in His Mouth, Death Cradles Her Arm (2016).


Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Mimesis of Mimesis’, 2016, performance, presented as part of If I Can’t Dance’s Finale for Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015 – 2016), Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. Photo: Florian Braakman.
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Mimesis of Mimesis’, 2016, performance, presented as part of If I Can’t Dance’s Finale for Edition VI – Event and Duration (2015 – 2016), Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. Photo: Florian Braakman.

Mimesis of Mimesis (2016) was commissioned by If I Can't Dance, Amsterdam and first performed and recorded on 24 November 2016 at the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam as part of the Finale to VI (2015-2016), Event and Duration.