Camilo Mejía

During Welcome To Our Guesthouse #8 Camilo will work on his research project VAIVÉN.

‘I see art as something that does not exist in a vacuum, and what motivates me is to be able to reflect the different aspects of life and existence in my work and discover what’s the relation between them.‘

VAIVÉN is part of a larger research journey, and this is the first chapter of this whole exploration that will continue to develop later on.  
A “vaivén” is the reciprocating motion of a body that, after traversing a trajectory, returns to retrace it in the opposite direction.   

In VAIVÉN, Camilo revisits, through his connection with dance and music, ideas about transformation, multiplicity, agency, and belonging. He navigates these ideas in order to expand and intersect the narratives that are in place for a black, queer, and migrant body.   

He goes back to his connection with the genre of salsa, the dance where the name “vaivén” comes from. He was inspired by the swaying motion of the body when dancing salsa and how, with this motion, the body is dealing with expectation, fixation, seduction, and time.  

Born in Cali, Colombia, Camilo Mejía is a multidisciplinary artist whose passion for improvisation and performance led him to SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance). In his final year of studies, he was invited as a guest artist for the Bodhi Project of SEAD, working on the piece Sounds of Trap by Cecilia Bengolea.

Mejía was part of the opera production L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festspiele, directed by Jan Lauwers. Following this, he joined Needcompany, performing in several productions, including War and Turpentine, Isabella’s Room, All That Good, and PIE (Probabilities of Independent Events).

Mejía’s latest work includes collaborating with Cherish Menzo on D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, which premiered in 2022 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and Frascati Theater in Amsterdam. He has been touring internationally and across the Netherlands with D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, performing in venues such as Theater Rotterdam, Theater Kikker, Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, and Bijlmer Parkheater.

CREDITS VAIVÉN  
Maker Camilo Mejía   
Music / Sound Clay Chèniére   
Scenography Špela TuŠar 
Light Pier Gallen   
Costume Patricia Mokosi   
Dramaturgy José Ramón Hernández, Nicole Geertruida  
Production / Managament Anaku