Draft:Christian Cruz

Christian Cruz (born in 1989) is a contemporary American artist who works in the mediums of performance, video, and installation.

Early life and education

Cruz grew up in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff. Her parents met just off the historic Jefferson Blvd. and divorced when Cruz was 10. She and her three siblings lived with their mother, who worked at a bar at night and as a housekeeper during the day.

Cruz gravitated towards art and wrote poems for her mother at the age of 5. Even as a child, Cruz’s performances were sensitive to the experience of performing, as she created dance routines to songs like Aqua's "Barbie Girl."

For high school, Cruz attended Booker T. Washington School of the Arts, of which Erykah Badu and Norah Jones are also alums. Cruz was drawn to tech work, construction, and design, preferring to shapeshift to what was needed for projects rather than compete with classmates. "Everyone wanted to be an actress, and I wasn't going to wait in line," she says.

Cruz found as a teenager that performance could release pain caused by physical and emotional trauma at home. This power of art witnessed first-hand, and her dad's encouragement to document family life when she was younger using his camera, widened Cruz’s ideas of art as a way of life and a vehicle for self-actualization. [ ] This later became a central subject of her work, which uses questions of identity, anger, and humor to reflect “the perspective of a small Chicana woman in love.” [ ]

Cruz attended Columbia College Chicago for Visual Arts Management and held the only poetry residency at The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. In 2013, she hosted and produced the educational radio program "Forañeo" at Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City.

Works

Piñata Dance is Cruz’s most recognizable work. Flexible in length from 5-45 minutes and visceral to the point of audience concern, it features Cruz acting as a piñata, and includes spoken vignettes by the artist on femicide, Chicanisma (Mexican-American feminism), cultural appropriation, and other topics related to life as a first-generation American. [ ] Versions have been performed in Houston, Boston, Dallas, and other cities; most recently, Cruz performed Piñata Dance wearing heels in an open-air market in San Antonio as part of the landmark survey exhibition Soy de Tejas. [ ]

“[Piñata Dance] is about a Latina woman repeatedly falling down, beaten, but most importantly, it’s about watching her get back up. And that means the world to me.” [ ] Pink Collar // Children’s Linen is a multi-part installation and performance that was also part of Soy de Tejas and was included in the Nasher Sculpture Center’s Nasher Public series. The works include cloth sculptures made of white bedsheets that act as a canvas for other installed clothing that belongs to her daughter, stacks of laundry tied to platform stiletto heels sometimes worn by a performer who walks precariously through a gallery space, and a performance that features a woman stacking white laundry baskets over her head until they fall. Cruz complicates ideas about domestic labor, motherhood, and beauty with these parts presented as a whole ritual. [ ]

They Tried to Bury Us features a performer restrained by a large pile of dirt, made to stay still with their arms free. The person can only perform self-nurturing tasks with their arms and hands like painting their nails or reading a book about Mexican folk tradition. [ ] This piece was the center of Cruz’s first solo show at Ex Ovo gallery, which received a full-page treatment in the Dallas Morning News. [ ]

Other projects

Cruz created and maintains the Dallas Performance Art Index. She also founded and runs the Mama Art Fund that awards single parents who are artists. [ ]

References

^ 1. "Ep 84: Mess With Texas." Decolores Radio. September 30, 2021.

^ 2. ""In This Video, Dallas-Based Artist Christian Cruz, Shares Her Vision and Story." Remezcla. October 27, 2020." Decolores Radio. September 30, 2021.

^ 3. "Art and the City: During the Coronavirus Pandemic, Local Dancers Practice 'The Art of Recovery.'" Dallas Morning News. April 14, 2020.

^4. "La exposición “Soy de Tejas” conecta a artistas latinxs de todo el estado." Glasstire. April 19, 2023.

^ 5. "Nasher Public: Christian Cruz on Pink Collar // Children's Linen," December 15, 2021.

"Artist Feature: Reflections of Performance at Satellite Art Show by Christian Cruz" October 9, 2019.

. 6. "Performing Brancusi: Christian Cruz at the Nasher Sculpture Center" Glasstire. January 14, 2022.

^ 7. "Christian Cruz: The Fantasy of Rest in the Pandemic Era." Southwest Contemporary. April 30, 2021.

^ 8. "Performance Artist Christian Cruz Creates 'Living Portraits' at West Dallas' Ex Ovo Gallery." Dallas Morning News. December 3, 2020.

^ 9 "." KERA's Art & Seek. March 24, 2021.