When Untitled Art opened its first Houston edition last week, the fair’s standout wasn’t found in the booths but underground. Artist Lita Albuquerque staged a performance that left critics and visitors buzzing, transforming the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a 1926 underground reservoir, into a stage for her latest work. Her piece, titled The Sea Is …
Lita Albuquerque’s Mesmerizing Performance at Untitled Art, Houston
When Untitled Art opened its first Houston edition last week, the fair’s standout wasn’t found in the booths but underground. Artist Lita Albuquerque staged a performance that left critics and visitors buzzing, transforming the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a 1926 underground reservoir, into a stage for her latest work.
Her piece, titled The Sea Is Within Me, was an intimate 25-minute performance that blended meditation, music, and dance in a dimly lit, echoing chamber. Albuquerque began by guiding small groups of attendees through a quiet meditation, asking them to locate themselves within both celestial and earthly realms.
A Story Rooted in the Future
The performance builds on Albuquerque’s ongoing narrative of Najma, a fictional 25th-century astronaut trapped between life and death. To bring this vision to life, she collaborated with her daughter and dancer Jasmine Albuquerque, vocalist Carmina Escobar, and double bassist Laura Dykes.
As the audience gathered around the cistern’s shallow waters, Escobar’s soprano voice suddenly filled the cavern, shifting from soft, soothing tones into piercing wails and anguished breaths. A flash of red light illuminated her body, amplifying the tension and transforming the dark, cavernous space into an immersive stage.
Dance, Sound, and Struggle
Dancer Jasmine Albuquerque soon appeared in a beam of white light. Her movements were playful at first, balancing Escobar’s haunting cries. But as the performance unfolded, her energy shifted. She thrashed violently, splashing water across the cistern, before collapsing into stillness—her body reflecting both strength and exhaustion.
Sometimes the performance resembled a dialogue between voice and body, a call-and-response of joy and despair. At other moments, the two moved together in harmony, almost like two halves of the same being. Both waded through the shallow water, reaching for one another, only to drift apart and reconnect again.
Throughout, the deep, resonant notes of the double bass anchored the work, its melancholy tones weaving between the intensity of the voice and the movement of the dancer.
A Powerful Ending
The finale was both haunting and ambiguous. Escobar and Jasmine Albuquerque locked arms, one facing forward, the other backward, as they moved toward the bass. Eventually, they separated—Escobar’s voice soaring into the cavern while Jasmine stood motionless. The lights dimmed, leaving only the bass’s deep drone to linger in the dark.
The ending left audiences questioning whether the performers represented two distinct beings, two states of existence, or simply reflections of one another. Perhaps the answer doesn’t matter. The performance suggested that through struggle—whether personal, physical, or cosmic—it is the journey of moving through it that transforms us.
Beyond the Cistern
The Sea Is Within Me was staged in collaboration with Untitled Art, Houston and accompanied Albuquerque’s works on view at the fair with Michael Kohn Gallery.
The performance proved that sometimes the most powerful art doesn’t hang on a wall or sit in a booth—it emerges in the moment, surrounding its audience with sound, light, and emotion that lingers long after the lights fade.
