Since 2018, protests in Chile have heavily critiqued the neoliberal system, a legacy from the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship. These protests intensified in 2019 and were underpinned by feminist praxis, with an emphasis on gathering on the streets, taking up space, and calling for a change to the status quo. Cheril Linett, as creative director of Yeguada Latinoamericana, led radical performances that explicitly criticized the powers that sought to control Chilean society—namely the Catholic Church, the State, the police force—undermining their authority, engaging in radical playfulness that cannot be contained. In this article, I combine two concepts by Sara Motta, ‘prefigurative epistemologies’ and the ‘affirmative storyteller’, arguing that in her direction of two performances by Yeguada Latinoamericana, Cheril Linett transforms into a ‘prefigurative storyteller’ creating visions of the world that challenge cis heteropatriarchy. I contend that through the creation of hybrid beings—half women, half mares—Linett’s Yeguada Latinoamericana distorts the somatic norm imposed by a society controlled by neoliberal and colonial legacies, forcing the audience to consider alternative realities of being and doing. As such, she pushes marginalized bodies and experiences to the fore, creating discursive and visual images of a world that resists through affective and collective action.
Céire Broderick (Fri,) studied this question.