Where Are You From?
Arts Commons is thrilled to welcome Migguel Anggelo as our 2024-25 TD Incubator Fellow, providing artistic guidance and curation for the interdisciplinary artist development program! As the first Fellow from outside of Calgary, Migguel will also be participating in the inaugral year of Radiate. In partnership with Residence Inn Calgary Downtown, Radiate provides studio space, accommodation, and a vibrant atmosphere to help Arts Commons Connects Fellows, alumni, and other talented artists.
Read on to learn about his vision for the 2024-25 season of the TD Incubator program.
Biography
Miami and Brooklyn-based and Venezuelan-born, Migguel Anggelo is an interdisciplinary performing artist. He invokes muses from art history, harnessing this lineage in effortlessly forward-thinking ways. He mines from his journeys as a Latino immigrant and a queer man: a fountain of source material to explore shared human experiences. He expresses himself through costume, musical composition, movement, and theater work, evoking the “showmanship of Desi Arnaz and the performance art of Klaus Nomi” (Theater Scene). His lyrical movement recalls Marcel Marceau, and his comic timing alludes to Charlie Chaplin. Marked by pop ambition, he nods towards the likes of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. With unabashed theatricality, Migguel Anggelo straddles decades, genres, and cultures.
From 2023 to 2024, Migguel rigorously developed and toured his outrageously queer and gender-bending theatrical experience, LatinXoxo, presented as part of the illustrious Under the Radar Festival in January of 2023, and then on tour as part of the series of Stanford Live, the Musco Center for the Arts, the Green Music Center, the BRAVA Theater Center, the Miami Light Project, the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, and others. In LatinXoxo, Migguel Anggelo peels back onion layers of personas while strip-teasing “Latin lover” clichés, reckoning with the tragic death of his homophobic and disapproving father.
Migguel Anggelo is currently developing a trilogy of distinct projects: English with an Accent, JOY, and ICONS. All three of these projects have been generously supported through the co-commissioning and presentation support of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. English with an Accent previewed in Washington D.C. in April of 2022, co-presented by Washington Performing Arts and Gala Hispanic Theatre. It was also a co-commission of Lincoln Center, presented at Clark Studio Theater in December of 2022. English with an Accent has received additional co-commissioning support from the Cultural Arts Center at Montgomery College, the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, and Russell J. Efros Sprout Foundation award, with residency support provided by MASS MoCA. JOY premiered at Lincoln Center as part of the Festival of Firsts in 2023, and the first episode of Migguel Anggelo's performance series called ICONS will be a community celebration of the musical legacy of Freddie Mercury, debuting at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center in December of 2024.
Migguel Anggelo has also developed the short film, Maid in America (2020) and the stage productions So Close: Love and Hate (2017), Another Son of Venezuela (2016-2015), and Welcome to La Misa, Baby (2016-2019). His discography includes English with an Accent (2022), La Casa Azul (2015), and Donde Estara Matisse (2012). Migguel Anggelo is also an accomplished visual artist, with previous public gallery presentations and acquisitions into private collections.
Vision Statement
Origin stories are found in every culture around the globe. From the earliest age, we are immersed in the origin stories of our families, our religions, and our cultures. Over time, we begin to formulate origin stories that shift away from the "we", and migrate to the "me".
The question "Where are you from?" is a question that has been a part of my existence for as long as I can remember. From a young age, I was always on the move — whether for work, for life, or simply because I had the immediate need to emigrate. I became an immigrant in my own country of Venezuela when I was 20 years old, leaving my hometown of Valencia to pursue theater in Caracas. By 23, destiny had led me to Germany, where a backpacking trip turned into a longer stay. My journey has since taken me across Europe, Latin America, and finally to the United States, where I now feel safe and free — able to express myself fully, whether through song, speech, dance, or on canvas. Each medium is a way for me to both escape and understand reality. My art allows me to delve into the rich, immersive world of life's possibilities. Though my love for Venezuela runs deep, I often felt like I didn’t belong there. Safety, in all its forms, was something I seldom felt.
“The question “Where are you from?” goes beyond geography and nationality. It is a state of mind. ”
I come from everywhere — the wind, the earth, my dreams and goals, as well as my frustrations. I am my past, my present, and my future. Especially in these trying times, when the world seems to be watching us all very closely through our phones and social media networks, we are tasked with having to explain our existence and our origin stories more publicly than ever before. Art in all of its forms — dance, theater, film, music, painting, craft-making, writing, etc. — provides us a chance to make this world a place worth living in; a world so often worn down by injustice and corruption. To be an artist in today's world, one needs to carefully consider the answer to the question of "Where are you from?". The next time you are asked "Where are you from?" — pause before you answer. And in that pause, find the art.
Migguel Anggelo
Want to hear more from Migguel? Check out this video to hear more about his background and artistic process.
Thank you to our naming sponsor, TD Bank, for supporting the TD Incubator program.
