ñ (enye) Opening Reception

ñ (enye) is a multimedia bilingual installation / listening party by ilvs strauss (ilvs pronounced “elvis”). Visitors are asked to bring their ears for a guided journey through a labyrinth of intentional sound, audible and otherwise. Along the way, we’ll flip through the catalog of basic human needs, delve into an inquiry re: the advent of language, and watch a video of the letter ’n’ being typed repeatedly in a word document, amongst other things. Ultimately, ñ (enye) raises the questions: What is it we hear? What is it we want to hear?

ABOUT ILVS STRAUSS

ilvs strauss (she/her) is an educated, queer, mixed-race, white-passing, female bodied, Honduran-American artist. An analytical chemist turned multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, and mover, ilvs was born in California and raised in Portland; she lived and worked in Seattle before moving to the ancestral and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, aka Vancouver. She is a dancer (her Dance Narrative solo, Manifesto, was listed in Dance Magazine’s BEST of 2014 list), visual artist (with exhibitions at Odyssey Gallery, Ethnic Heritage Art Gallery, and Smoke Farm), poet, strategic facilitator, technical director and lighting designer.

Every year since 2010, around the holiday season, ilvs lets her hair down, grows a beard, and dons some practical linens with a matching crown of thorns in order to portray her friend Jesus Christ in Kitten n' Lou's production of Jingle All the Gay. One of these days, she swears, she will stick that Manna joke.