Sylvia Palacios Whitman

In 1961 Palacios Whitman arrived to New York where she pursued her work in drawing and painting. She became interested in dance and theater performing with Trisha Brown and Robert Whitman, whom she married in 1969. Soon after leaving The Trisha Brown Dance Company, Palacios Whitman developed a unique performance style of her own in which she used surreal stage props and giant drawings to create a visual theater that combined a rich Latin-American pictorial sensibility with the minimalism of the New York dance scene.

Palacios Whitman at times used taped compositions by Steve Reich to accompany the phases of her performances, happy or melancholic scenes which lined up like three dimensional animate sketches, often informed by autobiographical stories and visions. Her performers were non-professionals whom she casted from her milieu or through chance encounters. The artist made central use of props, both found and made—such as cup and saucer, telephones, beds, a neon horse, mummies, needles and thread, an airplane in a cloud and most of all paper. Most of the materials are fragile and ephemeral in character and were often destroyed after the event. She performed these works at various venues in downtown Manhattan such as artists’ lofts, The Kitchen, Sonnabend Gallery, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Downtown Branch as well as the Guggenheim Museum.

Courtesy of BROADWAY 1602