BACKYARD [A FIELD TO SEARCH] Theater Freiburg I Freiburg

Since 2018 Laura Uribe and Sabina Aldana of LAS [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists] have been investigating the phenomenon of brutal disappearances in Mexico. They have developed performative strategies to raise awareness of this crime and take action through art. At the start of their research, the official number of missing persons was 32,000; today, 130,000 people are missing. In light of this incessantly escalating violence, the question arises: Why (choose) art when people are disappearing?

In response the two artists planned to open a pop-up store at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin in 2025. The deal: multifunctional designer clothes for the survival in the Global South, tools for searching for bodies and women‘s underwear to prevent disappearance: At PERFORMING DEMOCRACY, Laura Uribe and Sabina Aldana will present their items for sale in a performative lecture, refelcting on the years they spent searching for bodies in the mountains, deserts, and scrubland alongside with relatives of the missing in self-organized search parties. Their political research and personal experience are interwoven with their political agenda and their artistic concerns. 

Backyard uses fiction as a strategy of provocation. The theatre turns into a pop up store, workshop, and archive. It is exhibited what cannot be shown, sold what isn’t allowed to be sold – but it also enables the audience to experience what would otherwise be unbearable. 

"An intrusive evening about rupture in civilisation, which at the same time very cleverly illuminates the unequal conditions of global value chains, even in the creation of art, yet still allows us to go home feeling positive.“ 

- the curators

In other words:

This play is about crime in Mexico. 

People disappear in Mexico. In 2018, 32,000 people were reported missing. 

Today, more than 130,000 people are missing. 

Artists Laura Uribe and Sabina Aldana want to bring this problem to light. 

They talk about seven years of work. 

During this time, they searched for the missing people alongside the families. 

The two artists also display special items, as if in a store: clothing and tools used in the search. 

They combine their political work and personal experiences with their art.

https://www.performing-democracy.de/en/program/backyard 

Fr 08. Mai 2026 | 20:00–21:30 Uhr Tickets

Sa 09. Mai 2026 | 20:00–21:30 Uhr Tickets