Abrons Arts Center

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Natalia Lassalle-Morillo
 En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy

November 5–December 20, 2026

En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy is a work spanning performance, film installation, and an exhibition that reassembles the Greek myth of Antigone through collaboration with an ensemble of nontraditional actors residing in Puerto Rico and in New York City’s Puerto Rican diasporic community. Developed through a multi-year process of collaborative rehearsal and experimental filmmaking, the ensemble creates a shared space to examine the collective consciousness shaped by decades of environmental, economic, political, and spiritual tragedies in the archipelago.

Directed by Natalia Lassalle-Morillo as part of her two-year La Residencia residency with Abrons and Pública Espacio Cultural in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and organized by residency curator Natalia Viera-Salgado, En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy will be presented at Abrons Arts Center as a two-part film installation. Part I chronicles the New York-based cast’s process of rehearsing and reassembling the myth, while Part II follows a Puerto Rico-based ensemble as they develop their own perspective on and interpretation of Antigone. The film installation will be accompanied by an exhibition featuring works created in collaboration with the nontraditional performers, tracing and unraveling the nearly eight-year process of creation, research, and exchange between New York City and Puerto Rico.

The work was developed in collaboration with Erica Ballester, Yulliana Padilla, Rosa Plá, Yasmín Ramírez, Nina Lucía Rodríguez, Raquel Rodríguez, Fiamma Seda and Emma Suárez - Báez.


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  • Nov 5 November 5

En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy, 2026. Images courtesy of the artist.

About Natalia Lassalle-Morillo

Natalia Lassalle-Morillo (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is an artist and director. Merging experimental film and theater methodologies, her practice examines memory and history through extensive and rigorous periods of research and co-creation. Her projects unfold as rehearsals for an alternative historiography, thinking alongside fellow artists, researchers and non-traditional performers to examine our relationships to the past while simultaneously foregrounding the creation of new mythologies and fictions rooted in the Caribbean.Presented as multi-channel video installations, short and long-form experimental films, and live theatrical performances, her work has been presented extensively in venues, festivals and theaters internationally. 


In 2026, she participated in the 61 International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Other exhibitions include the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (New York), Amant (New York), RedCat (Los Angeles), 22a SescVideoBrasil Biennial (São Paulo), National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, Blackstar Film Festival (Philadelphia), Images Festival (Toronto) and Seoul Museum of Art (Korea). Natalia has been an artist fellow at the Smithsonian Institute, and participated in residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), Amant (NY), Pioneer Works (NY), MassMoca (Massachusetts) and Fonderie Darling (Montréal). She has taught film and theater at Maryland Institute of the Art, CalArts and Bard Microcollege, and facilitates workshops and knowledge exchanges as a way to socialize her artistic practice. She developed her practice nomadically, but she is currently based in Puerto Rico, where she was born.

Funding

En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy, is commissioned as part of La Residencia, a residency partnership between Abrons Arts Center and Pública Espacio Cultural (San Juan, PR), made possible with funds provided by the Mellon Foundation, and presented in partnership with the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. Additional funding for the project’s presentation in Puerto Rico provided by: Comisión Especial Conjunta de Fondos Legislativos para Impacto Comunitario and The Wallace Foundation.