Marcus Kuiland-Nazario

Marcus Kuiland-Nazario is a Los Angeles native and an interdisciplinary artist, performance curator, and producer with more than three decades in the LA art and performance scenes. Mentored by Tim Miller and Linda Frye Burnham, he arrived at Highways Performance Space for one of its very first performances and, as he says, never left — becoming a founding artist of both Highways and the 18th Street Arts Center, where he remains an artist in residence. He is a co-founder of VIVA!, the nation's first Latino gay and lesbian arts organization; Clean Needles Now / LA Community Health Project, a harm-reduction needle exchange; Max 10 Performance Lab; and Oficina de Proyectos Culturales, a contemporary art center in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and was co-director of the time-based gallery Crazyspace. His long-term, research-based performance works explore extreme states of emotion — grief, anger, loss — informed by the cultural and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora. He has performed everywhere from LACE, REDCAT, LACMA, the Mark Taper Forum, and Pacific Standard Time to nightclubs and the streets, with international appearances including the ICA London's Rapture Festival and Rompeforma in San Juan. He received the Santa Monica Artist Fellowship in 2020.