Mex Files LIVE: The Pandemia Chronicles

Portrait of Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, courtesy of the artist.

A man sits upright at a table wearing a black hat, sunglasses, and an open black jacket with yellow shoulder pads exposing his chest with tattoos. A stack of white paper sits on the table along with a vase of flowers, an intricate ash tray with skulls, candles, and a plastic alien head labelled with the text “Alien Pops.” The room is red behind the seated figure, with artworks, photographs and carved items decorating the walls. A prominent neon sign that reads "La Nostalgia BAR” sits above the seated person.

Photo by Zen Cohen

Guillermo Gómez-Peña returns to Chicago for his first LIVE and in-person performance since lockdown began. This new solo performance monologue features new writing responding to the multiple pandemias including rantings and confessions. This one-night event is presented in dialog with his ongoing experimental radio program presented by Public Media Institute Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border (1985–2021) and the exhibition at the Jane Addams Hull-House Gómez-Peña’s Casa Museo: A living Archive and Museum. (September 9, 2021—May 29, 2022).

Featuring a cameo by conceptual artist, performer and storyteller Robin LaVerne Wilson aka DRAGONFLY

Register for the performance

Mex Files LIVE: The Pandemia Chronicles is presented by Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in partnership with the School of Theater and Music, College of Architecture, Design and the Arts, University of Illinois Chicago.

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Public Media Institute

Public Media Institute (PMI) is the media partner for Toward Common Cause, broadcasting Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files on Lumpen Radio 105.5 FM and Lumpen.TV, and providing live-streaming and other services for virtual programs. PMI is a non-profit, community-based art and culture organization headquartered in the neighborhood of Bridgeport. Its mission is to create, incubate, and sustain…

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Portrait of Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art and Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border

A year-long series of experimental audio performances from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist, writer, activist, and MacArthur Fellow.

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Posted 01/11/2021
A portrait of Guillermo Gómez-Peña in the studio. The artist is wearing a colorful feather headdress, futuristic metal sunglasses, and a bone for a mustache.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña

I invite you dear foreigner in my performance country to dream with me and send me your own letters imagining a better art world or rather a myriad of art worlds, coexisting in synergy with nature, radical imagination, and community

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A tour group gathers around a glass vitrine.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum draws upon the legacy of international peace activist, suffragist, and feminist, Jane Addams, and other social reformers who lived and worked alongside their immigrant neighbors to create social change on the Near West Side of Chicago. Plan your visit By reservation only. Open Tuesday–Friday and Sunday 9 am–5 pm. Gómez-Peña’s…

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