Friday, March 8, 2024 — Friday, April 26, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Without Goodbyes is an evocative cinematic exploration, inviting audiences to engage with the discourse surrounding queer temporality, cultural identity, and the profound implications of loss, mortality, and love.
The film unfolds as a contemplative exploration on the dialectics between impermanence and permanence through loss, grief, and memory. GeoVanna Gonzalez's latest cinematic endeavor delves into the lives of two queer protagonists, positioning their narrative within theoretical frameworks that resonate within both cultural and existential inquiries. Without Goodbyes intimately centers itself in and around Camuy, the artist's familial origin on the northwestern coast of Puerto Rico. Inspired by Gonzalez's great aunt who is grappling with dementia and is the last surviving sibling of a generation, the film becomes a deeply personal exploration of loss, grief, and memory within the context of family history.
Drawing inspiration from nontraditional memorial services, the film examines contemporary embalming practices in Puerto Rico, where the intersection of life, death, and the preservation of the physical body explores how cultures approach rituals around death, mourning, and the ontological implications of memorializing departed souls. Incorporating techniques of contact improvisation into its narrative, the film deconstructs the embodied experience through dance, using movement as a symbolic language to express the ephemeral nature of connections and the nuanced interplay between presence and absence in human relationships.
As the narrative unfolds, it navigates the esoteric dimensions of espiritismo, intertwining the characters' spiritual quests with the Afro-Caribbean cosmology of Yemayá. This convergence provides a lens through which to examine the intersections of queer identity, spirituality, and cultural resilience within the socio-geographic context of Puerto Rico.
The unfolding love story between the protagonists serves as a discourse on queer temporality, becoming a locus for exploring the intersectionality of queer love amidst cultural traditions.
During the development of the film, GeoVanna Gonzalez turns to Francisco Oller's painting El Velorio; it becomes a semiotic mirror reflecting the narrative's culmination. Here, the characters confront the dialectical tension between the personal and the collective, the transient and the eternal. The connection lies in the visual representation of death and mourning in Puerto Rican culture. Oller's masterpiece could serve as a cultural artifact reflecting the intersection of life, death, and societal practices in Borikén.
GeoVanna Gonzalez is a Miami-based artist. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California where she received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design. Her work has been shown at various institutions including The Institute of Contemporary Art, Station Contemporary Arts Museum, NSU Art Museum, The Bass Museum, Fringe Projects, and The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. Gonzalez received awards and residencies from South Arts’ Southern Prize and State Fellowship, WaveMaker Grant, The Ellies Visual Arts Award, The South Florida Cultural Consortium, Santa Fe Art Institute Residency Santa Fe, Franconia Sculpture Park, Bemis Center For Contemporary Arts, and CAMPO. Her work is in permanent collections at Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places and University of Maryland Art Gallery.
Download the catalog with essay by curator, John Massier
The production and gallery projection of this film were made possible by generous underwriting support from Doctors Amy & Julio Alvarez-Pérez and Dôme Art Advisory (Brooke Fitzpatrick Leboeuf), program support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and M&T Bank, and general operating support from The Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation and Erie County.
