about
Artist Statement
How does the body interact with language? How can a linguistic inheritance and the language that
bombards us daily produce choreography? In the fourth grade, after refusing to pronounce “caribou”
in the same way my teacher does, I quickly learned that the use and misuse of language has social
and physical effects on the body. Drawing on elements of dance, performance art, poetry, and sound
art, I investigate the field where alphabetic and gestural language shape the movements of the body.
As a response to standards of movement and speech, I rearrange verbal and nonverbal communication,
and investigate the restrictions and possibilities of movement in various contexts. Recently my
performances have merged inefficient uses of breath with unlikely combinations of movement, endurance,
poetry, found text, speech, singing, and non-linguistic vocalization. My playful, yet methodical process
often involves mining and transposing systematic approaches to language, voice, and movement.
Bio
Justin Cabrillos is an artist, writer, and performer based in Chicago. Cabrillos received his MFA
in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a summer fellow at Ox-Bow School
of Art, he was an IN>TIME Incubation Series artist-in-residence at the Chicago Cultural Center, and
he is a 2011 LinkUP Artist at Links Hall. He recently collaborated with Every House Has a Door
in a performance for artCENA in Rio De Janeiro. He is the recipient of a Greenhouse grant from
the Chicago Dancemaker's Forum.