Quién Es Tu Gente: The Performance Artists of the RGV
Story by Nina Alegre
Edited by Abigail Vela
- August 6, 2025
Performance artists can be found everywhere, from singer/songwriters Björk and Yoko Ono to well-recognized artists such as Ana Mendieta, Joan Jonas, and Marina Abramović, whose work continues to inspire generations of both performance artists and their spectators.
There are also moments in which pop culture has portrayed performance art, such as in the 1999 Romantic Comedy film She’s All That. During one of the scenes, the male love interest, played by Freddie Prinze Jr., is forced to perform at a performance art show with nothing but a hacky sack ball and his own creativity.
Performance art comes in all types, including spoken word and burlesque. It can be challenging to define performance art, as art is subjective. Although you might not always think of it as such, in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), we also have individuals who partake in performance art.
To Be Cringe Is To Be Free
If you’ve never stepped foot into Cactus Valley Art & Supply Company, then you probably haven’t had a chance to meet the talented, creative individual that is Souther Recio (she/they), owner of Cactus Valley Art and a multi-disciplinary artist who is experimenting with their own performance art in the RGV.
Recio states that her background in performance goes back to her community theater days, where she got her start at six years old, but that experience in her life was more traditional theater. She went into detail, explaining, “I didn’t start exploring performance as an extension of my art practice until late last year in 2024.”
“UNGOVERNABLE“ was Recio’s first performance part of the solo show “HYSTERIA,” which Recio put together at their gallery space. Following “UNGOVERNABLE,” Recio did another performance at Ponte Creative Studio & Gallery (Ponte) for the “Únete, Únete” exhibition titled: “MANIA.”
Recio describes their performance work as being deeply rooted in her theatrical background, so you’ll see a lot of those influences within her work. She says, “I’ve only done two pieces so far, and they’re both very different structurally, so it’s hard to explain, but I would say my work is unsettling, meant to leave you feeling called out or inspired in some way. It’s grounded in emotions and utilizes set, props, and music to propel the message forward.”
Although Recio has never done any performance work outside of the RGV, she states that it’s a “big goal” of hers. “I’d love to travel and work with other artists, performers, and musicians to create some cool, weird work,” she shared.
Furthermore, Recio mentioned some folks she thinks of as performance artists. She said, “Locally, the first person that comes to mind is Josué Ramírez. He is probably the first person I met down here who is actively pursuing performance art. He creates these piñata suits and gets inside of them and dances around. It’s mesmerizing.”
Ramírez was not the only person who Recio name-dropped; they also talked about meeting Ash(ley) Michelle C. through the Flower Shop Art Residency program. “Her work is poetry, sculpture/installation that you’re invited to interact with, creating a performance of its own. She also creates weird videos of her reading her poetry. She helped me out when putting together my latest performance, MANIA,” she commented.
Performance-wise, Recio shared that Niki de Saint Phalle “has been a huge inspiration” to her “as a visual and performance artist.” Recio said, “[de Saint Phalle] has work that are these canvas/plaster sculptural pieces that held balloons filled with paint. She took them out into a field and shot them with a gun, causing the paint to bleed all over the canvas. The entire thing was filmed and became part of the art as well. I like art that disrupts or that goes against what we’re expecting of it. I want to create art like that.”
Last month, Recio taught a performance art workshop at Ponte, where they walked participants through their process for creating a performance piece. Recio shared some of the insights during the workshop she led, “One thing we talked about during the workshop is the importance of being able to be a little silly, or the willingness to look dumb. When you’re an artist or a creative of any type, you have to make a lot of bad art before you get to the good stuff. People these days are so afraid to try and be perceived in the discovery phase, but we must get past that. To be cringe is to be free.”
Burlesque, Piñatas, and Performance Poetry
Monik Rodriguez (she/her) is a multimedia and performance artist from Alton, Texas. Rodriguez shared why she considers herself a performance artist: “I would say that I am, and what makes me say that is the fact that I perform with the intention of having an audience there, or I’ve performed to audiences.”
In Rodriguez’s opinion, some categories that fall under performance art are stand-up comedy, burlesque, and poetry readings. She states that “any opportunity to share artwork with an audience and be vulnerable in front of people […] is […] performance art.”
Rodriguez discussed how she got into performance art, and that it was by taking a performance class on a whim that led her to this art medium, where she decided to engage with it further by taking a class called Latina Feminisms at Brown University.
It was when her professor played a video of Nao Bustamante’s “Indigurrito,” which showed her what a career in performance art could look like. “I’ve never seen anything like it. To this day, […] I think I make art that comes out of that performance because I wanted to see more art like that, and I just wasn’t finding it,” Rodriguez confessed.
“There was something about that piece, the way that everyone in the room was shocked, really surprised, but then it was also held in this productive uncomfortableness, which follows in the rest of my own performance arts. And it’s really what I took away from that performance was [that] I want to make people productively uncomfortable.” By seeing the “Indigurrito” burlesque piece by Bustamante, Rodriguez got into burlesque, and after that, she began to research, and she even joined a burlesque group at Brown.
So far, Rodriguez has done Borderlesque, which are her border burlesque performance art pieces, Piñik, which is a piñata of herself, as well as some stand-up comedy routines.
Krista Alexia Olivarez (she/her/hers) is a performance poet from the RGV. Olivarez shared that she started to perform when she began to do slam. Olivarez has been going to open mics with Unfolded: Poetry Project since they began in 2022, but states that she started exercising her performance writing in Neil Hilborn’s Writing Circle. Olivarez was able to find her poetic voice at the Writing Circle, and it was here that she became encouraged to be a performer.
Olivarez took advantage of the opportunity and traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the Midwest Poetry Mash-Up. Although she had initially gone to support friends she had made at the Writing Circle, she ended up performing after being signaled as the sacrificial poet of the night. Olivarez performed her poem: “Nervous Hot Girl Anthem.”
In April of this year, Olivarez performed three poems at the Midwest Poetry Mash-Up, where her team placed fourth at the competition.
Olivarez shared what it felt like to perform her poem, “car crash in d(eer) major” at the Midwest Poetry Mash-Up, she said, “I’m in competition mode, as soon as I get up there behind that mic, I [think], ‘Where’s this judge? Where’s that judge? Where’s that judge?’ [If] the majority of judges are over here, [then] I’m going to perform to this part of the audience. [If] they’re scattered around, [then] I’m going to make sure this part of the room gets this line and this energy, and I have to give them all the same attention.”
Olivarez also shared what she enjoys writing about as a poet: “I like writing about mental struggle. I like writing about love and heartbreak. Sometimes I write about family and cultural identity. It took me a long time to get into the groove of being proud of where I’m from, being proud of who I am, being from the Valley, being Latina, Chicana, whatever you want to call it.”
She opened up more deeply about her experiences and how writing is the way she heals, “I’ve been through a lot of things. I want to bring them to life. Reliving things is a way to cope with them. We do that in therapy all the time. So, writing is a very cathartic, cleansing ritual of mine, and when I finally perform the piece, [I’m] closing the ritual. It’s a limpia, basically.”
Olivarez encourages going to slams because you can learn so much, even if people don’t want to perform or compete.
Finally, Olivarez shared how much poetry means to her, “Being a teenager just wasn’t a great time for me. […] I dealt with a lot, and I was changing so much, and the world around me was changing. I didn’t feel understood, and poetry was [what] kept me going. That one quote from Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams [says], ‘Poetry. These are the things we live for.’ Right? We do. Whether we acknowledge them as poetry or not, not everything is a poem, but there is poetry in everything.”
Places Where You Can Perform in the RGV
If you felt inspired by any of these performance artists and poets and want to engage with this art medium on your own, but maybe haven’t found the right place, Olivarez highly recommends following and keeping up with what the Unfolded: Poetry Project is doing in the RGV.
If you are in Brownsville, Texas, and are interested in attending poetry events or are looking for a place to perform, Búho will be having various events this August.
So, don’t keep your art to yourself. The world deserves to see how talented you are!
