It's Time We Talk

It's Time We Talk was a performance art exhibition held at Public Space One in Iowa City, Iowa on Saturday, April 14, 2018. Curated by Melissa Airy, a group of 9 female performance artists came together to use live actions and storytelling to speak about their personal experiences as women that they had previously kept private to the world.

KYLIE GAVA
E Agora? (Now What?), performance, audio recording, 2018

Kylie Gava was born in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1992. She is currently a Junior majoring in sculpture with a minor in Portuguese. Before coming to the University of Iowa, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in painting and drawing. Having grown up with dual citizenship to the United States and Brazil, traveling was always a part of her life. During her time in-between schools, she lived in Brazil learning Portuguese and teaching English and also in traveling within France. Her work often deals with physical and emotional boundaries, using building materials such as, bricks, concrete, insulation, glass and dirt.

In her own words:

My dad, José, he was born in 1954 in the small farm town of Burarama, ES, Brazil to his parents Derly Paganote and Remigo Gava. My Vô(grandpa) was a hard man, unlike my dad who took more after my Vô(grandma). My dad once told me the story of a pregnant goat falling off a mountain by their house. My grandpa cut the goal open to save the baby. When my grandpa died, my dad received his meat knife, knife sharpener, and a smaller belt knife. When my dad died, I kept his meat knife along with my grandpa's knife. I wrapped them in kitchen towels and kept them in storage.

Four days after my dad died, I was assaulted by one of his acquaintances. The open space my father left became a space this man thought he was now free to enter, without consequence. Through my performance, E Agora?, I continuously sharpened my dad's knife. I became my own protector and next in line to generations of men with knives.

My performance was accompanied by an audio recoding of the poem, José by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a very famous Brazilian poet. This poem talks about isolation, fear, and hopelessness in reference to the Brazilian people during World War II. Drummond uses the common name José as a place holder for anybody and nobody.

Kylie's website