Carlos Maria Romero a.k.a. Atabey
Atabey is an artist and curator with a focus on performance, movement, community, pedagogical projects, and cultural heritage practices relevant to historically marginalized peoples and social cohesion. Working over more than 2 decades in different fileds of art, some significant projects were the co-curation of the exhibition Josephine Baker & Le Corbusier in Rio—A Transatlantic Affair, Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, 2014; and the curation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th iterations of the Contemporary Dance University Festival, Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogota, 2009–11.
*
As of 2023 Atabey is Curator for Performative Practices at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt - HKW in Berlin, where actively develop and host a numerous program of performances, workshops, practices, ceremonies, talks, screenings and hybrid formats every year, including the co-curation of the opening exhibition O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies, of the the inaugural festival Acts Of Opening Again - A Choreography of Conviviality, of the conmemorative series about the legacies of the Haitian Revolition Bwa Kayiman - Congressing at the Heart of Liberation, or the row of music and dance workshops Bullerengue. Planting The Seeds for Community Healing.
*
Among various pedagogical frameworks in and outside academia, Atabey has led since 2016 projects catering to groups of all ages, genders and sexualities, of different migration status and origins, of mixed abilities, and to other care and arts practitioners; facilitating embodied, edifying, caring, communal, pleasurable technologies and strategies of reclamation and resistance to hegemonic and historical violence. They were between 2009 and 2011 a lecturer in Time Based and Performing Arts at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá; and were in 2012 in charge of the design of the Dance BA of Atlantico Public University in Barranquilla, Colombia. They co-deviced in November 2023 with Satu Herrala the seminar from bodies to bodies - curating as fascilitating of coming together - curating as performative practice - curating as embodied practice ... for the students of the BA in Dance at the HZT, UDK - University of Arts, Berlin.
*
Other projects include developing in 2013 and 2014 the large scale live interventions Proyecto Márgenes 1 & 2, with Vividero Colectivo, in Central Cemetery and Barrio Santa Fe, the red-light district of Bogotá, in collaboration with the Cultural Heritage Institute of Bogotá, the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation and the History Department of National University; curating in 2015 Blushing Pavilion—250 years of architecture, seaside culture and sexuality in Margate, UK; inititating in 2016 the project Margate Coastal Park, comprising research and strategies for the recuperation of a derelict historic stretch of coastal public space, including the commissioning of public art interventions and the curating of a festival; and in 2022 curating culturally affirmative events for the Latinx community in London with Brixton Reel Mental Wellbeing Project, and with Movimientos at Somerset House.
*
In 2021 their film La Nave featuring the work of the collective La Nave De Lxs Locxs in carnaval in Barranquilla, received the New Cinema Awards from Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, and since then the film continues to be screened internationally.
Atabey@DAI: Atabey was guest respondent to the Kitchen of 18 January 2024