Jessica F. Cooke reactivates brid(g)e (2017), Guta Galli’s crawling piece devoted to female immigrant artists, performed in the streets of San Francisco. At 6:30pm F. Cooke starts crawling dressed as a bride towards the Chapel, where her progress will be live-streamed. Meanwhile, Galli performs Serpent God, F. Cooke’s new piece inspired by Galli’s pregnancy. In this performance, she embodies a ritual to honor the sacred elements that evoke the radical transmutation she goes through. When the bride finally meets the Serpent, an anthropophagic wedding begins, and thus the profane and the sacred devour each other.

F. Cooke reactiva brid(g)e (2017), el trabajo de rastreo de Galli dedicado a mujeres artistas inmigrantes, presentado en las calles de San Francisco. A las 6 p.m. F. Cooke comienza a gatear vestida de novia hacia la Capilla, donde su progreso se transmitirá en vivo. Mientras tanto, Galli interpreta a Serpent God, la pieza de F. Cooke inspirada en el embarazo de Galli. Ella encarna un ritual para honrar los elementos que evocan la transmutación que atraviesa. Cuando la novia finalmente se encuentra con la Serpiente, comienza una boda antropofágica, y así lo profano y lo sagrado se devoran mutuamente.

INI TAT is a transdisciplinary performance collective founded by Guta Galli & Jessica Fertonani Cooke. The collective was born of fire in 2018 and is based between San Francisco, CA and São Paulo, BR. INI TAT chose a snake’s forked tongue as its core symbol. This body-based collective questions the intersections between language, race and culture while making critical commentaries on how the rise of the gig economy has impacted labor and the contemporary body regarding human relations. INI TAT highlights how radical informality has produced a capitalism that is fueled by brutal exploitation, especially in sexual and black markets. INI TAT combines conceptual thinking with rites of passage manifested through performance, sound, video and installation pieces.

Guta Galli (Interdisciplinary Artist / Performer)
Guta Galli is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist working with performance, video, installation and photography. She holds a post-graduate degree in Photography (FAAP – São Paulo) and a MFA. (San Francisco Art Institute - SF). Her feminist researches study the intersections between womanhood, power, race, sexuality and violence. Galli’s most recent researches use her personal experience as an expatriate artist to make a critical commentary on immigration politics on Trump’s era. She has exhibited individually in Rotterdam (Brazil Rotterdam Festival / Netherlands), San Francisco, California (Black & White Projects Gallery) and São Paulo (Matilha Cultural and Legislative Assembly of São Paulo), and has also participated in several art fairs and group exhibitions in São Paulo (SP-ARTE), Rio de Janeiro (RIO-ARTE), Brasília, Santiago, Rome (Biennale) and in the US, where she also had group and solo performances at the San Francisco Art Institute, SOMArts, SFMOMA, Contemporary Jew Museum, De Young Museum (SF), Berkeley Art Museum, Start Up Art Fair (SF and LA), Shotwell Gallery (SF), Root Division (SF), BAMFA (Berkeley), Amos Enos Gallery (NY), The Reece Museum (Tenessee) and The Collective (Denver).

Jessica Fertonani Cooke (Interdisciplinary Artist/ Performer)
Jessica Fertonani Cooke is a Brazilian performance, video and sound artist. She completed her degree in fine arts at the Art University of Berlin (UdK) under the mentorship of stage designer and painter Mark Lammert and her MFA in studio art in San Francisco Art Institute. She discusses notions of ancestral diaspora upon the body, nation and land of the ‘Americas’ and its persisting roles inflicting/enduring post-colonial and capitalist society. Thus raising questions on territory, survival, spirituality, violence and cure. Fertonani Cooke has participated of selected exhibitions such as the San Francisco International Art Festival (SFIAF), Discovery Art Fair in Frankfurt, Blacklash performance festival in Zürich, the 55 project in Miami and Nars Foundation in Brooklyn. As co-creater and performer Fertonani Cooke has participated in collectives for the Taos Paseo Festival with Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s La Pocha Nostra, The Lab in San Francisco with Cristobal Martinez and Guillermo Galindo and for Agora Collective for the Month of Performance Art festival at L’Atelie Kunst Spiele Raum, Berlin, Germany.