USA Projects

José Torres-Tama is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist.  He explores the Latino immigrant experience, the underbelly of the North American Dream mythology, and New Orleans Creole history through spoken word poetry, critical essays, visual arts, short films, and performance art.  He has worked in the New Orleans arts community for twenty years, and since 1995, he has toured nationally and internationally. 

He is the recipient of a 2010 Creation Fund Award by the National Performance Network for the commissioning of a sci-fi Latino noir solo called ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, which chronicles the current rise in hate crimes against Latino immigrants in the United States.  He is an NEA award recipient for his multidisciplinary performance work and a Louisiana Theater Fellow.  In 2009, he was awarded a Louisiana Division of the Arts grant to perform his critically acclaimed post-Katrina solo The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina in London, Liverpool, and Aberystwyth, Wales, as part of his 2009 international tour profiled in American Theatre magazine's March '09 issue. 

Also, he is the recipient of a 2008 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for the publication of his first art book by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art called New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy, which documents his pastel portraits of 19th century Creoles.  Among other awards, he received a 2005/06 Fund for the Arts Fellowship from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) to develop his performance book manuscript.

His performances thrive on a fusion of bilingual texts, film projections, conceptual rituals, and exaggerated characters, creating spectacles that are visually dynamic and politically charged.  His solos have been presented in England, Wales, Poland, Slovenia, Mexico, and extensively across the United States.  He has graced the stages of Performance Space 122 and Theater for the New City in New York; Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles; The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque; DiverseWorks in Houston; and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.  In the academy, institutions such as Cornell, Duke, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Louisiana State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland, and Ohio State University have presented his multimedia solos, workshops, and lectures on performance art as a tool for social change.

From The Village Voice in New York to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and to academic publications such as Theatre Journal, critics have praised Torres-Tama's performance work:

Torres-Tama treads that dangerously vague turf of performance art gracefully ... with dexterity and daring.      --The Village Voice                                                                   

Torres-Tama is both a versatile writer who can be lyrically evocative as well as bitingly humorous, and an impressive performer.  --The Philadelphia Inquirer

 …like the best performance artists, Torres-Tama seduces his audiences through humor and the ability to portray disparate characters.  --Theatre Journal                                    

www.torrestama.com