Pedro Sepúlveda Cruz Coke lives and works in Mexico City. As a performer, he is part of the MIL M2 collective, which since 2017, as nomads, has sought dialogue with different places in South America, the Caribbean and Europe. Today, in the middle of political, social, economic, health and environmental crises, MIL M2 continued their work exploring new forms to activate critical thinking in the collective. In doing so, they explore different methods of intervening in both public space and the boundaries between the collective and the private.
Pedro Sepúlveda Cruz Coke
179 YEARS
For May Town in Zetkin Park, Pedro Sepúlveda will conduct five interviews with the Mexican actress, singer, and performer Julia Pastrana, who was exhibited in the 19th century as “the ugliest woman in the world,” “the monkey woman,” or “the woman with a beard” due to a congenital medical condition and the resulting extreme body hair. During this period, she gained a special relationship with the city of Leipzig through her production of the theater play “The Cured Meier,” which was censored in a second performance for immorality and obscenity.
Many contemporary scientists took her appearance as an opportunity to situate her as a kind of ” bonding link” between apes and humans. Among others the famous naturalist Charles Darwin. Even after her death at the age of 24 in Moscow, she was mummified and her corpse, together with that of her newborn child, was exhibited in Europe until 1970. It was not until 2013, thanks to the efforts of various Mexican cultural and political actors, that Julia Pastrana was buried in her motherland of Sinaloa – for her protection under many tons of cement.