Exile and desert in Limbo, spectacle by Gabriela Muñoz

Abstract

This paper offers a hermeneutical approach to Limbo, a clown spectacle by Mexican artist Gabriela Muñoz, known as “Chula the clown”, from the concepts of desert and exile, both present in this performance, as in Maria Zambrano’s work, as a philosophical problem, and in researcher Ignacio Izuzquiza’s reflection. Exile and desert are at work also in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, influential on Muñoz performance, as it is shown by some poetic signs. From researcher Melissa Lima Caminha, our paper works deconstructively on the modern feminine clown notion and monstrosity category to talk about people whom have been expelled from their social community as they are considered different, living then in the borders of exile. In Muñoz, as in clown tradition, this comic figure is shown as a symbol of the ones excluded, deformed, abnormal and, even, despicable. From this key issues, the artist presents limbo as an emotional state where frontiers of time and space are diluted, in an environment moving through desolation and comicality.