Correspondences

With Correspondences, multidisciplinary artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya offer multiple entry points for spectators to engage with questions of being, interdependence, and coexistence. The human body (performer and observer), machines, natural elements, and the urban square mingle in an entangled poetic microcosm while opening inquiries into animate life and environmental ethics. In the inaugural presentation of this multi-borough project, audiences could safely engage in Manhattan’s Astor Place Plaza installation over conversation, and bear witness to daily activation periods performed by members of the LEIMAY Ensemble.

Single bodies are enclosed inside transparent chambers partially filled with sand. Bodies are donned with gas masks as they try, time and again, to rise to standing. At intervals, machines attached to the chambers trigger a blast of sand causing the performers to lose their footing, sinking them back down into the ground. This seemingly perpetual eruption repeats throughout daily performance activation periods of Correspondences, both with and without performers.

LEIMAY Gala: Kalavinka, 2017

Northern Lights Gala, 2018

Japan Society, 2019

Discover Watermill Center, 2019

Tabula Rasa, 2019

Astor Place, 2020

Cocktail Conversations, 2020

Hurleyville, 2021

Socrates Sculpture Park, 2021

Correspondences View #1, 2021 (Film)

MIT, 2021 (Installation)

Correspondences View #2, 2022 (Film)

Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 2022

Interview: “Multidisciplinary Artist Ximena Garnica on LEIMAY and Interconnection”

“…[LEIMAY’s] work spans genres, stretching into sculptural pieces, movement, light installation, video and education” – Britt Stigler, All Arts (2021) for Correspondences

Review: “Simulations: Living Sculptures on the Public Stage”

“Its visual resonance is immediate. The performers, writhing in the sand of their dusty chambers, reflect to the mask-wearing public a kind of horror laden with the imagery of contamination and confinement ubiquitous with the events of this year.” – George Kan, Brooklyn Rail (2020) for Correspondences

Review: “Correspondences”

“It’s like going to an art gallery, but more immediate…I am moved by what looks like gas masks that the performers are wearing; what might be whimsical seems darker. The human body contains more than light or heat or air.” -Marcina Zaccaria, Theater Pizzazz (2020) for Correspondences

Review: “Correspondences with nature”

“…pieces like Correspondences could push us to not only stay connected, but imagine new ways forward.” -Joey Sims, Transitions (2020) for Correspondences

Abstract: “More-than-human Movements: Trans-corporeal Choreographies of the Anthropocene”

“…Correspondences’ more-than-human choreographies exposes the trans-corporeal exchanges that both structure and biologically alter the performers.” “Correspondences as a case study to argue that if we are to persist through the ‘horrors of the Anthropocence,’ we must not only stay with the trouble, but move through the trouble.” –Angenette Spalink, Performing SLSA: A Roundtable on Performance Studies and the Field’s Dispersions (2024)