Claire Tancons

Selected press for EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean
DuSable Museum, Chicago May 23 – August 13, 2017

A bold alliance of popular and avant-garde culture, “En Mas” presents a number of curatorial challenges, some intentional and some not. […] [W]hile it makes perfect sense for a museum of African-American history to host a show about Caribbean culture, it seems a missed opportunity on the part of mainstream art institutions to have embraced a non-Eurocentric history of performance art.

Selected press for Tide by Side, Faena District Miami Beach, November 27, 2016

a fabulous colourful parade

…a typically nontraditional event this week, a “processional” called “Tide by Side” that was conceived by the performance art specialist Claire Tancons.

Faena Art’s Tide by Side parade. Claire’s historical research into European and Caribbean processions and parades challenged her to select artists who could successfully make art an experience in the streets of Miami Beach

…a beautiful whirlwind

…truly captivating

equal parts community celebration and high-concept performance

Selected press for EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean
Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, March 7 – June 7, 2015

In tracing the lineage of performance to traditions other than those of the European avant-garde, the show could be considered something to be continued, even beyond the Independent Curators International-supported tour that is currently being organized.

EN MAS’ does not and cannot capture the overwhelming energy of participation and community in the streets during Carnival, but it does serve as a moment to reflect on how artists, curators, and viewers can make sense of performance inside and outside of museum walls.

[…] the exhibition poses a number of questions that open new avenues for curatorial thought. What is Carnival? What is performance? What has been the impact of the two on each other? What is the potential for the processional in curating, not merely as a subject of exhibitions but also as a characteristic?

“En Mas'” isn’t one of those exhibitions that’s trying to blur the lines between Carnival and capital-A art. Its ambition is much greater and for that it should be applauded.

A succinct visual distillation of the often contradictory elements that make Carnival culture so provocative—no matter where in the world it takes place.

This expansively ambitious show is based on a fresh postulate for history and an apt query for today.

Claire Tancons illuminates the centrality of mass processional performance in cultural identity formation and contemporary artistic practice—as well as its political and emancipatory potential, globally—as her latest project, EN MAS’: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean, opens in New Orleans.

Claire Tancons’ work is both pioneering a new understanding of Carnival and creating space for performance art outside of gallery and museum spaces.