On Saturday, June 7th at 8pm, 2025 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow Kenneth Jiménez will present his second program, Umbral. The performance features actress and award-winning dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya, percussionist Carlo Costa, and violinist Sabrina Salamone working at the intersection of folklore and experimentalism. Over the course of the year-long fellowship, Jiménez will engage artists from the Caribbean, Central and South America, discussing music’s complex relationship to tradition and genre. The three-part exploration of mortality, fragility, hope, acceptance and serenity will take place at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater.
Umbral centers on the visionary Costa Rican performer Wendy Chinchilla Araya, whose work as both a film actor (“Clara Sola”) and principal dancer for the Costa Rican National Dance Company has captivated audiences with its dreamlike expressivity. Her presence evokes a world that feels both deeply personal and utterly surreal—a quality that captured Jiménez’s attention for this curatorial project exploring the liminal space between reality and reverie.
To anchor the program visually, Costa Rican photographer Emiliano Zúñiga Hernández—whose work opened the first installment of the curatorial fellowship in March—was commissioned to create a new photographic series inspired by Chinchilla Araya. These images, rich with the textures of the subconscious, combined with the dancer’s ideas and concepts served as creative prompts for musicians Salamone and Costa, who composed an original live score in response. The resulting performance is a multisensory event born from a shared artistic language grounded in dream worlds, folklore, and the unknown.
Wendy Maria Chinchilla Araya has been a dancer in the stable cast of the National Dance Company of Costa Rica since 2005, where she has also worked as a choreographer and rehearsal director. In parallel, she has worked on various independent projects over more than 20 years of uninterrupted career as a performing artist, venturing into theater and film productions, including the Swedish-Costa Rican production "Clara Sola," which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Her work bridges the gaps between dance, theater, performance, and music.
Percussionist, drummer and composer Carlo Costa was born and grew up in Rome, Italy. Since 2005 he has been based in New York City. In the past several years he has been making music which is largely improvised and experimental in nature. Through the use of a variety of unusual techniques and added objects Carlo has meticulously developed a distinctive and wide-ranging sonic palette.
Sabrina Salamone is a violinist/ improviser originally from St. Louis, MO. Her studies began with classical music, ultimately moving to NYC in 2018 to further explore approaches to music and art. Her music is a process of unfolding, evolving and coagulating sounds through experimentation (carte blanche) and collaboration.
