Love Burst welcomes P.6 audiences to re-imagine and create a new understanding of care, inclusivity, and fierce love. Special New Orleans guest artists will welcome everyone to experience a burst of energy and joy at Harmony Circle.

Raúl de Nieves is a multimedia artist, performer, and musician, whose wide-ranging practice investigates notions of beauty and transformation. De Nieves’s visual symbolism draws on both classical Catholic and Mexican vernacular motifs to create his own unique mythology. Through processes of accumulation and adornment, the artist transforms readily available materials into spectacular objects, which he then integrates into immersive narrative environments.

He has presented solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL; and the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, GA; among other institutions. Additionally, he has participated in group exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the High Line, New York, NY; the K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and numerous other venues. De Nieves has staged performances at institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA and MoMA PS1, Queens, NY. He has been an artist in residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and Fountainhead, Miami, as well as a fellow at the Joan Mitchell Foundation. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Chokehole is a drag wrestling group born from the New Orleans underground warehouse party scene in 2018. The show is an electric high energy multimedia experience, with video elements, special effects, giant props and of course wrestling. It’s undeniable originality has taken it from said warehouse culture, to stages in Las Vegas, Germany, Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Chokehole was also featured on an episode of the newest rendition of Queer as Folk, set in New Orleans. More than a drag show, it is a unique medley of fine tuned skills, showcasing queer vibrancy, physicality and creativity. 

Antonio Garza is a performer, language worker and parader. He learned to love crowds in Monterrey, Nuevo León and Reynosa Tamaulipas. As a boy in rural south Texas he yearned for the negotiations he learned in crowded streets and markets and that required contortions and the relinquishing one's own personal space. The riptide of crowds may have pulled him to New Orleans. At university he had assumed that these corporal negotiations were therapy to the linguistic ones particular to growing up along the US Mexico border. His interdisciplinary studies focused on sociolinguistics and the politics of language.

He teaches English at the Intensive English Language program at the University of New Orleans. His writings have appeared in magazines in journals in the US and Mexico. He toured his one-person show, Men in Uniform, in theater festivals in the US and in France. 

Antonio received a crash course in parading when he founded a group called Amigos de los Amigos, which put on its first Cinco de Mayo Marching Fiesta in 2008. The parade and route highlighted 19th Century geo-political conflicts that tied New Orleans to Mexico,the breaking of piñatas in front of statue of Benito Juarez, commemorating his exile in New Orleans. 

In his seventeen years in New Orleans, he worked in crowd control for the Camel Toe Lady Steppers in the Muses parade. He has also assisted and paraded with Krewe da Bhan Gras. He has marshaled with ‘Tit Rex and Krewe of Chickpea’s inaugural procession. He was also a founding Captain of krewedelusion and head of security. 

He earned a degree in African American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His MFA in Creative Writing is from the University of Florida.