VHS Presents: Family - 5/19/18

VHS Presents: Family, a screening of personal video archives. 

May, you're too kind to me! Here's to another first: I did my first performance on May 19, 2018. Super excited to be part of the VHS Presents series at Videology, hosted by my wonderful friend Angel Yau and Ross Brunetti. I showed a montage of home movies from 1997. Tons of cute lil Yeiry, see gif for example.

Lil Yeiry Feeding Cows in 1997

VHS Presents: Family
May 19, 2018
Videology in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
2 pm
Free

About the show:

Adult Yeiry Presenting in 2018

THIS MONTH we will be screening videos of our past that highlight our families in all their weird, beautiful, loving, cringey glory. Whether they showered us with embarrassing affection or discouraged (and ultimately inspired!) us through their own repressed problems, we have the videos to prove why we became the people that we are. Come laugh with us at our ridiculous families!

Each month we bring together some of the best comedians and performers in NYC to show you the videos they made in their embarrassing adolescence. We’ve seen school projects, Tarentino knock offs, PSAs, high school musicals, and many other ways that children embarrass themselves before they become adults that embarrass themselves on stage purposefully.

Line up :
Anita Flores
Lorena Russi Serna
Yeiry Guevara
Matt Proctor
Jon Hart

Hosts:
Angel Yau and Ross Brunetti
 

Facebook Event
Event Page on Videology Website

Tamale Gif Set

It has been years since I made tamales with my Mom. Mostly because it's very labor intensive and requires a crew for the assembly line folding. For Christmas 2017, we decided to make the jump and go for it.

With just Mom and I, we managed to stay up all night and made over 100 tamales. Well, I lost count but easily around that number. We peeled garbanzos, chopped potatoes, cleaned farm-raised chickens, all surrounded by anecdotes that started "cuando mi mamá lo hacia asi". The hours in the kitchen provided us the safe space to chat, share chisme and I learned how generations of women in our family cooked. Tamales brought us together and when cooked, they bring people together in a damn delicious way.  Radio Pulgarcito provided the perfect soundtrack to our midnight cooking session. 

In between roasting banana leaves, mixing the masa and getting the achiote spice just right, I managed to capture her movements with a few gifs. 

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I definitely teared up when I had my first set of cooked tamales. You can taste our hard work. You can taste the levels of complexities. You can taste how every ingredient makes a melody to this sweet song in your mouth. Tamales are our family history wrapped up in a banana leaf. Savor it. 

The finished product:

Y’all, I’m like tearing up at how delicious these are, at how hard we worked on them, on what they mean to us in our traditions and all that symbolism wrapped in a banana leaf. #CentralAmericanTwitter pic.twitter.com/NRxGjB4uTW

— Yeiry (@yeirybird) December 24, 2017

Caritas Bonitas

Keeping images whimsical and animated. A few of my faces and other faces I love.

Manos en Movimiento

I love watching my Mom's hand move. They're versatile. Arthritic. Nurturing.
I wrote a piece for La Liga Zine about my mother's hands. Read it here.
Additionally, below is a small gif set I made dedicated to them.

Pulgarcito Verde

Here are a few gifs to share from my visit to El Salvador. 

Aqui están algunos gifs para compartir de mi visita al nuestro pulgarcito verde. 

Nature Sounds

Took a day trip to Storm King, an hour outside of NYC. It was the most perfect autumn day. Not a cloud in the sky. 

Desert Dreaming

I celebrated my 30th birthday in the crisp Arizona desert. Here are a few gifs from my trip.