Let My Body Eat the Sun: Christie Blizard
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Spring 2021
Built in 1908 the Cowtown Coliseum in the Fort Worth Stockyards is the world’s first indoor rodeo and an historic home for livestock exhibitions. It is also a place of unexpected cultural significance as for over one hundred years Cowtown Coliseum has also hosted a wide range of live performances, from Elvis Presley to Diaghileff’s Ballet Russes. On October 16, 1920, Enrico Caruso, the celebrated Italian operatic tenor, performed at the Cowtown Coliseum to a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 8,000 people. To mark the centenary of this extraordinary event, the Art Galleries at TCU invited Christie Blizard to create new artwork in response to this unique moment in the city’s history.
Let My Body Eat The Sun is a contemporary opera that presents an otherworldly story of life, death and afterlife based on Blizard’s ongoing exploration of posthuman possibilities. Written and scored by the artist, the opera features performances by mythical Texas characters - - a tumbleweed, an armadillo and a cactus - - and alien improvisational singers. Together they follow the exploits of an unnamed masked protagonist, joining in for moments of frenzied and gleeful dancing and also witnessing a deadly encounter with a mattress. Eventually reborn as a visitor from a different universe, Blizard’s protagonist is transformed by a spectacular bird. Combining elements of traditional operatic drama with classical mythology, science fiction and the surreal, Blizard’s opera summons the spirit of Caruso in a colorful and absurd 21st century Western vision.
Filmed onsite at Fort Worth’s Cowtown Coliseum under socially-distanced conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, Blizard’s opera was performed by local artists including students, staff and alumni from the School of Art at Texas Christian University. The film formed the center of Blizard’s exhibition at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts which was also populated by costumes and props used in the making of the opera.
Installation images by Lynné Bowman Cravens
