PEREJIL

by Jonathan Gonzalez

February 2023
Set Design + Mycelium Fabrication by Grace Jung
Size: fifty 6” x 9” x 4” mycelium bricks
Medium: mycelium, hemp hurds, parsley

In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered the deaths of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent along the two nation’s borders. Over the course of five to eight days, 12,000-35,000 were killed based on how they pronounced the word “perejil” or “parsley” in Spanish, and how their pronunciation of the “r” gave away their Haitian Kreyol mother tongue.

Jonathan González's durational duet for two-one performer and a body of parsley-mycelial bricks-reflect on this massacre as performers construct and dismantle a brick wall into a river formation almost endlessly, coupled by speech acts that reflect on this historical wound which continues to impact the physical and psychological borders between Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Euro-American acts of intervention.