Collaboration between Maya Escobar and Rio Yañez, 2009
Acciones Plásticas プリクラ, is a graphic art- Purikurafied extension of the series performance Acciones Plásticas, featuring The Latina Hipster, a bad-ass, Morrissey-lovin’, tuff-girl, sexy chica; The Latina Role Model, a diploma totin’, intellectual, sexy, social media goddess; and The Homegirl, a hybrid of Escobar’s Midwestern Chach and Yañez’s West Coast Chola.
Youtube video, 2007
Frida Kahlo played with the identity that she wanted to project and the identity that was placed on her by others. Kahlo used her clothing, political affiliations, sexual escapades, and personal traumas, to create a character that informed her body of work. She inscribed her identity, painting her image over and over, constructing a mythology around her persona.
Ongoing collaboration between Maya and Gonzalo Escobar, 2019
The Presente Project is recently launched bilingual audio/visual project that explores the impact of deportation and the threat of deportation on young children children and their families. We are actively seeking participants. If you are interested or know someone who is please contact us here.
Escobar-Morales Internet Performance, 2010-
Challenging mainstream and academic representations of Latina identity, performance artists Maya Escobar and Andria Morales publicly negate, deconstruct, and reconstruct their individual histories, identities, and conceptions of self. In their project Are You My Other? a self-portrait dialog exchange blog, Escobar and Morales draw from popular culture, Latino/a cultural iconography, and their lived experiences to create and virtually perform conflicting representations of Latina selves. From devoted homemaker to hockey player, reggaetonera to construction worker, conceptual artist to human corn on the cob, the artists model the multiplicity of identity.
Due to their shared physical similarities, followers of their online exchange often mistake Escobar and Morales for one another. The merging of their identities is further perpetuated through their activities on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. By locating these performances within the space of the web, where they are free from restrictions of time and place, the artists are able to concurrently enact multiple personas while simultaneously forming a unified (Latina) hybrid self.
Internet Performance, 2007
Acciones Plásticas was originally conceived as an interactive performance piece meant to combat stereotypes affecting young women. Modeled after low-quality videos blogs, Jewish Women, Jewish Girls, The Club, and Latina Role Model each feature a woman whose life is defined by societal expectations. The videos were strategically placed on popular social networking sites, including YouTube and MySpace. The layout of YouTube contextualized the videos and framed them with user comments and similarly tagged user content. Jewish Girls was picked up by a popular left-wing Jewish blogging site Jewschool, and soon entered the Jewish Blogosphere where it was referred to as the JAP. This repositioning shifted the focus from the portrayal of multiple interwoven identities to a depiction of the Jewish American Princess. The JAP became how people knew my work, validating me while simultaneously conflating my identity with that of this particular character.
Collaboration between Maya Escobar and Gonzalo Escobar, 2009
Talking about Orchard Street, is a multi-sensory installation that explores the generational transmission of Jewish life through dialog. The father-daughter duo traveled from Chicago to New Haven to conduct interviews with former members and friends of Orchard Street Shul and to record locals’ stories of growing up in New Haven during the 1920s and 30s. These stories of everyday life include tales of flirting on the front steps of the shul, eating herring and kichel, speaking Jewish, finding first jobs, going on first dates, learning bar mitzvah portions, and hearing (or having) loud conversations in the women’s section. In Talking about Orchard Street, visitors are invited to sit in comfortable armchairs, sample herring and kichel, listen to excerpts from interviews and engage in dialog with each other.
Escobar-Morales project, 2011-
Acting as designers, distributors and promo models, Escobar-Morales established AMerican MEdia Output, an online brand design and marketing agency focused on travel and tourism. Blurring the line between performance and reality, AMO's ad campaigns ask viewers and participants to contemplate economic and social issues through the lens of advertising. AMO is based online at AMericanMEdiaOutput.com and has disseminated their advertising over the internet using various social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
AMerican MEdia Output's campaigns include "WELCOME," a tourism campaign for Arizona, "Public Airways," an airline specializing in direct flights from South and Central America to the friendliest destinations in the US, and "#YoSoyOro," a re-branding campaign for Philadelphia's El Centro de Oro commercial district.
Free popular-education coloring book, 2008
Drawing on her background in Art Education, Escobar addresses the determinative powers of potent ‘historical’ images, by conflating them with a coloring book aesthetic. All of the images she has re-represented are of iconic status and often emblematic of intensely complicated and critical events of socio-historical relevance. Through the mass distribution of socially-impactive illustrations, even if well-intentioned and of humanitarian concern, various interwoven and complex histories can be inappropriately cropped into just a few planar pictures. Our generally reinforced chronological tendencies then order these image-based concepts of historic significance, and place them in linear sequence; almost like they are dominoes. As though there is a direct and orderly progression of events, which fall one into the other with implicit seriality. As with these apparent paths of history, seemingly, laid out for us, within our personal and communal identities, there grows a determinist sensibility. Perhaps instead of limiting the understanding of a picture as being “worth a thousand words,” they can also be recognized as only particular points of reference; useful for demarcating a complex web of history, but not clear trajectories for some one, preordained future. – seeNoga
Escobar-Morales Internet Persona, 2010-
The Fat Free Elotera is an internet persona created by Escobar-Morales on Are You My Other? Best known for her 2010 appearance in the music video "Mas Maiz" The Fat Free Elotera continues to take the internet by storm. In her most recent publicity stunt, The Fat Free Elotera faked her own death and returned as Calavera Elotera.
AMerican MEdia Output Campaign, 2012
Wondering if our girls are legal? Imagine an Arizona where cold spring water is in abundance, and everyone is free, especially the women. Enjoy the breathtaking natural terrain and spiritual landmarks revered by American ancestors. Come for the women in hot summer fashions. Stay because you're welcome. - americanmediaoutput.com
IRL Performance at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, 2005
Clip from you and your friends vol 1, 2007
#Hashtag Mural - Collaboration with folks on Twitter, 2011
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Berlin’s Eruv is a conceptual project that addresses the assumed non-presence of Jews in Germany. Berlin does not actually have an eruv. There is however, an active Jewish community, one that is frequently overshadowed by the city’s prominent monuments and memorials commemorating Jewish life (death). Berlin’s Eruv weaves together voices from Berlin’s Jewish community in an attempt to construct a metaphorical eruv representative of a living Jewish Community. Just as the eruv exists in the minds of the people who abide by it, Berlin’s Eruv manifests itself through the conversations surrounding the idea of the piece.
AMerican MEdia Output Campaign, 2014
The Golden Block is hot! Follow the yellow brick road for sizzling flavors, infectious rhythms, gold jewelry shops, art on every block and Big Bellies... lots of 'em. Yo Soy Oro is a re-branding campaign for Philadelphia's N. 5th Street commercial district, El Centro de Oro. - americanmediaoutput.com
IRL/Myspace Performance, 2005
Custom panties, 2005
Shomer Negiah is a concept in Jewish law halacha that prohibits any degree of physical contact with, or touching of, a member of the opposite sex, except for one’s spouse and immediate family. Shomer means “guards”, but due to its common use in phrases relating to religious practice, it has come to mean: “adhere to” as well. Negiah is the Hebrew word for “touch”, and thus Shomer Negiah is a term used to describe one who “guards the touch” or simply “adheres to restrictions of touch”. Although the feminine form of the term is technically Shomeret Negiah, it is almost always used in the masculine, even when in reference to women.
Shomer Negiah Panties enable women to abide by the halacha, but still be individual and sexy at the same time.
Youtube video, 2007
I think it is very important for each of us to have an enjoyable Shabbos experience. And to be able to in some ways personally define what that Shabbos experience entails. There's a lot of different minhags that I think a lot different people have that not every one has. And there are certain things that we develop not necessarily because they are passed down from our father, or our mother, or your mother's father, just because it is something that makes your Shabbos experience a little bit more enjoyable a lot these personal minhags that we all have...
Escobar-Morales performance, 2011
Escobar-Morales perform a funerary ritual, referencing the mythical Mayan tale of the Hero Twins reviving their dead father, the Maize God. In their contemporary interpretation of this ancient story, Escobar-Morales simultaneously represent the body and the soul; the God/ Goddess and twin offspring, in both physical and technological forms using live performance and web based video projection.
Collage, 2004
