In her most recent micro poetic film, Ana María Caballero pays homage to Pipilotti Rist’s Ever Is Over All and proposes a progression in the pursuit of feminist empowerment. Whereas Rist’s protagonist symbolically takes down failed systems, Caballero’s main character practices radical repair. Pace posits that private joy is as powerful a form of resistance as destruction. 

Caballero stars in her own work, performing gleeful movements rooted in Latin American salsa music, which she grew up dancing and continues to access as a source of resilience. In Rist’s, a woman violently smashes car windows as she passes, to the approving glance of a policewoman. 

The works are connected through the protagonists' outward expressions of self-possessed joy and their public (and thus out-of-place) physicality that speaks volumes. Both works are also linked through the protagonists’ red shoes, which, to Caballero, represent confidence in the trodden path.  

In her most recent micro poetic film, Ana María Caballero pays homage to Pipilotti Rist’s Ever Is Over All and proposes a progression in the pursuit of feminist empowerment. Whereas Rist’s protagonist symbolically takes down failed systems, Caballero’s main character practices radical repair. Pace posits that private joy is as powerful a form of resistance as destruction. 

Caballero stars in her own work, performing gleeful movements rooted in Latin American salsa music, which she grew up dancing and continues to access as a source of resilience. In Rist’s, a woman violently smashes car windows as she passes, to the approving glance of a policewoman. 

The works are connected through the protagonists' outward expressions of self-possessed joy and their public (and thus out-of-place) physicality that speaks volumes. Both works are also linked through the protagonists’ red shoes, which, to Caballero, represent confidence in the trodden path.  

Scattered stamps of the poet’s body in motion – still frames from the recorded choreography, extracted with AI – contextualize this mark-making as they dance between the words on the page. The resulting etchings speak an evocative, guttural language, a poetic mark-making that transmits the immediacy and urgency of performance.

Pace is from Caballero's seventh book, Material, a recipient of Trio House Press’ Editors’ Selection in Poetry and forthcoming in 2026.

Concept, choreography, performance: Ana María Caballero
Directed: Jayme Kaye Gershen
Produced: Mad Arts 
Custom algorithm: Cameron Nelson

*all quotes are taken from the curatorial text for the exhibition by Doreen Rios, which can be found here