Of Saints, Spirits, and Misfits: Coming Together and Coming Undone in Santa Salsa

Abstract: This article focuses on Santa Salsa, a restaurant, art space, performance, artwork, and art concept located in New York City and created by Venezuelan contemporary artist Sergio Barrios. Through an analysis of the use in the space of the grotesque and the references to the Venezuelan cult of María Lionza, I argue that Santa Salsa routinely collapses distinctions between inside/outside, foreign/national, migrant/local, and living/dead, giving way in the process to the coming together of a collectivity that can only exist after—and because—the illusion of complete belonging has been shattered. Through this collapse, Santa Salsa asks us to reexamine the myth of wholeness and completeness driving the formation and consolidation of the collective, not with the aim of ultimately foregrounding the individual, but with the goal of rendering visible the fictions that enable the construction and the desirability of a stable and homogenous migrant and/or national identity.