Re-Union
May 3, 2026
the braid – la trenza
June 1, 2026
WhiteBox Portable is pleased to present at The Emily Harvey Foundation: UNYIELDING BODIES. This program convenes Yohanna M. Roa and Liz Canner in a rigorous, embodied inquiry into systemic violence viewed through an intersectional lens encompassing gender, race, colonial histories, economic structures, and environmental precarity.
The evening will feature Clandestine Republic: A Lament for Sor Juana, a live performance by Yohanna M. Roa in collaboration with FlamenKora and mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Peraza, alongside The Science of Female Pleasure, a video work by Liz Canner, followed by a conversation with the artists moderated by Jovana Stokic.
Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at 6 PM
At The Emily Harvey Foundation
537 Broadway, 2nd Floor
Rather than centering rupture alone, the project insists upon joy, care, sensuality, and corporeal presence as critical and radical strategies, forms of resistance, endurance, collective memory, and re-existence. Through performance, moving image, and public discourse, the body emerges not as a passive site of injury, but as an active field of knowledge, transmission, agency, and refusal.
Conceived as a hybrid encounter between performance, screening, and public conversation, Unyielding Bodies foregrounds lived experience, feminist historiography, and the political intelligence of the senses—unyielding, unapologetic, and fully present.
Clandestine Republic: A Lament for Sor Juana is an original performance by Yohanna M. Roa.
- Text and concept by Yohanna M. Roa
- Music by Ali Boulo Santo Cissoko, Roberto Monteiro & Volker Goetze (Flamenkora) and Gudalupe Peraza
CLANDESTINE REPUBLIC, A Lament for Sor Juana, by Yohanna M. Roa, is structured as a contemporary epistolary gesture addressed to Juana Inés de la Cruz across time. Rather than approaching Sor Juana as a historical monument, the work reactivates her as a living field of transmission, fracture, intellectual resistance, and feminine autonomy. The performance incorporates original vocal composition, references to Novohispanic Baroque visual language, textile construction, culinary gesture, and vocal traditions associated with lament. The project emerges from Yohanna M. Roa’s sustained engagement with Sor Juana’s Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz and the Atenagórica Letter, texts that constitute one of the most significant defenses of intellectual inquiry.
Yohanna M. Roa is a New York-based transcultural feminist visual artist whose work engages performance, textiles, and archival intervention to examine how history, memory, and knowledge are materially embodied. Her work has been presented internationally, including at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; Museo Kaluz, Mexico City and MACCO, Oaxaca
Originally exhibited in 1999 at the Contemporary Artist Center Gallery in North Adams, Massachusetts, THE SCIENCE OF FEMALE PLEASURE by Liz Canner is a multimedia work examining the historical construction of female sexuality through experimental narrative, feminist inquiry, and visual critique. Centered around the figure of “Woman Test Subject A,” the work interweaves personal memory, medical history, and representations of scientific authority to question how cultural “truths” surrounding women’s bodies have historically been produced and enforced. Through humor, irony, embodiment, and historical layering, the work proposes the possibility of reclaiming agency from systems of medical, social, and ideological control.
Liz Canner is an American filmmaker and media artist known for documentary, installation, and human-rights-based media practices. She directed the New York Times Critics’ Pick Orgasm Inc.: The Strange Science of Female Pleasure and is the founder of Astrea Media, Inc.
Jovana Stokic is a Belgrade-born, New York-based art historian and curator. She is currently on the faculty of the MFA Art Practice, School of Visual Arts, New York, and New York University Steinhardt. Department of Art and Art Professions, and Art History Department, SUNY New Paltz. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Stokic is a former fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the curator of the Kimmel Center Galleries, New York University; and the performance curator at Location One, New York. Co-author of The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art, which offers a comprehensive guide to the major issues and interdisciplinary debates concerning performance in art contexts that have developed over the last decade; and the essay for 59th Venice Biennale exhibition catalog of Montenegro.
FlamenKora is an internationally recognized acoustic trio founded by German-born/New York–based trumpeter and composer Volker Goetze. The ensemble brings together Ali Boulo Santo Cissoko, a Paris-based Mande griot and kora master; Roberto Monteiro, a flamenco guitarist from Rio de Janeiro based in Madrid; and Goetze on trumpet and flugelhorn. Developed through residencies at the Paul Manship Artists Residency and the Goethe-Institut Madrid, the trio creates a contemplative dialogue between West African tradition, flamenco, and jazz improvisation. Formed during a residency at the Salzburg Festival in 2021, FlamenKora released its debut album through Motéma Music in 2023. Critics including JAZZIZ, Le Monde, and RFI have praised the ensemble for its poetic eloquence, musical subtlety, and deeply human approach to collaboration.
Mexican mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Peraza is an internationally acclaimed vocalist and founder of Mexamorphosis, a New York–based platform for cross-cultural artistic exchange. She has performed with major institutions including the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, and the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, as well as at Lincoln Center and the Bard Music Festival. Her work bridges opera, early music, and intercultural collaboration, with performances in venues including Palacio de Bellas Artes and Sala Nezahualcóyotl in Mexico City. Beyond the stage, Peraza is recognized for her curatorial and cultural initiatives, collaborating with organizations such as the Irish Embassy of Mexico and the Irish Arts Center. In 2016 she was honored as “Mexican Woman of the Year” in Union City, and in 2021 received a City Artist Corps Fellowship in New York City.
