The Cenote Ring is an immersive live performance devised by multimedia artist Paola Estrella. Blending layers of media and meaning in close collaboration with a community of artists with backgrounds in music and dance, fashion, design and programming, Estrella presents an imaginary journey inspired by the otherworldly landscapes of her native Mexico.
The project takes its name from a constellation of underground caves on the Yucatán Peninsula. These unique geological formations were created by the impact of an asteroid over 66 million years ago that is believed to have led to the extinction of dinosaurs. The cenotes have been discovered and rediscovered by generations and are considered a sacred source of myths, legends and ancestral wisdom, and a reminder that all life on Earth essentially stems from stardust.
The Cenote Ring describes the bond between the earth and the universe by oscillating between fact and fantasy, micro- and macrocosms, extraction for immediate return and intergenerational resourcefulness. The hallowed arcs and medieval arches of the historical venue hold prayers of the Welsh worshippers who congregated here in the late 19th century as well as memories of the hedonistic crowd of clubbers a hundred years later when the chapel was at the heart of London nightlife as the Limelight.
The one-off performance on 9th May is designed around several interlinking acts that form an immersive environment of words, visuals, sounds and movement. At its centre is an installation of Paola Estrella’s large scale paintings, enhanced with futuristic 3D visuals by Costas Kazantzis, and soundscapes incorporating real-life data of asteroids and comets by artist duo Bon Music Vision.
Montañera, who has been described as one of one of Columbia’s most intense and unique voices, translates ancestral cultural memory into unique synth arrangements. Both Montañera and Paola Estrella have been identified as two of the six Latinx artists to watch by V&A East curator Rubén Salgado Pérez who programmed an earlier iteration of The Cenote Ring last year.
Another segment is led by movement artist Pierre Babbage who uses dance as a means of connecting to queer history and ancestry with garments developed by textile designer Gabrielle Venguer in tandem with Paola Estrella’s creative process.
The Cenote Ring serves as a perfect example of Estrella’s cross-disciplinary, diverse and collaborative approach which led to her co-founding the performance art platform Diasporas Now in 2011. Having worked with major institutions including Turner Contemporary and South London Gallery, the collective has just taken up residence with the Institute of Contemporary Art and will be presenting a new flagship programme of talks, performances and workshops.
The performance is the precursor of Paola Estrella’s solo exhibition of paintings with HS Projects in June, who support The Cenote Ring alongside an Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants, and the Artists Make Space Programme at Orleans House Gallery.
The Cenote Ring – Performance 9th May 2025, 7.30pm. Stone Nest – TICKETS
The Cenote Ring – Exhibition 20th June – 12th December 2025 HS Projects
About
Paola Estrella – Lead Artist is a multimedia artist from Mexico based in London. Her work shifts across painting, video, installation and performance, with speculative fiction serving as a core element of her practice. Through this lens, she conveys themes of intimacy, desire, and becoming. Estrella delves into the impact of new technologies on public and private spheres, examining how the imaginary shapes social conventions, identity and our notion of reality. Her interest lies in the intricate tensions and complexities of belief systems and worldviews, as well as the intersection of imagination and perception in relation to transcendent experiences.
She has performed at CCA Goldsmiths, South London Gallery and the V&A Est Museum East, among others. She was commissioned by CW+ to exhibit in ‘Journeys: Healing Arts’ at Saatchi Gallery. She was selected for New Contemporaries 2022. She won the Travers Smith CSR Programme 2021, was shortlisted for the LUMEN Art Prize and exhibited at the Museum of Mexico City in 2021. Her work was selected by White Cube Gallery for Tomorrow:London in 2020.
Estrella holds a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in Contemporary Art and studied art direction and mixed media at Central Saint Martins and is co-founder of Diasporas Now. @py_star
Performance Collaborators
Bon Music Vision: Yerosha Windrich and Elfed Alexander Morris are avant-garde artists, composers and producers. With a lifelong interest in finding fluidity in perceptual conventions, Bon’s mission is to create something from the perspective of the outsider. They have worked on releases with Warp Records, Leiterverlag, Transgressive HQ, True Panther, and 4AD. @bon_music_vision
María Mónica Gutiérrez, known as Montañera (Mountainess), has established herself as one of the most intense and unique voices hailing from Colombia. Her latest solo album A Flor De Piel was released in November of 2023 via the Austin, Texas-based label, Western Vinyl, with the support from Help Musicians Foundation. It has received glowing reviews from Pitchfork, The Guardian, Iggy Pop (BBC Radio), David Byrne, amongst many others. @montaneramusica
Pierre Babbageis is a movement artist, choreographer and movement director. Influenced by surrealism, 00’s action movies and old diary entries, their practice focuses on dance as a means of connecting to queer history and ancestry, rejection, sexualisation and hope queer ancestry, displaced and repressed identities using movement as a space to explore these questions and experiences. @movementbypierre
Costas Kazantzis work focuses on exploring innovative pathways in game engine technology, 3D design, and extended reality (XR), with an emphasis on their transformative potential in fashion and contemporary art. With a background in computer engineering, fashion media production, and visual communication, Costas’ practice positions immersive technologies not as substitutes for physical experiences but as tools to enhance real-world environments and enable real-time interactions. @costaskazantzis
Gabrielle Venguer has been developing research into textiles as methods of communication to create new languages that become garments. In her work, she is interested in questions of magic produced by the interaction between garments and the body, exciting the senses through choreographed gestures of sounds, scents, textures, and colours. She experiments with dialectics of delicacy vs roughness, sensuality vs comfort, existing systems vs the ominous, in the search for something between grace and savage. @dupla.mx
Diasporas Now
Diasporas Now is an artist-run live art platform founded at the Royal College of Art in 2021 by alumni Rieko Whitfield, Paola Estrella, and Lulu Wang. They curate events and artist development programmes bridging museum lates, panel talks, and nightlife, while championing artists of the global majority working across experimental performance art, live music, dance, and DJ sets. They have worked with the U.K.’s leading institutions including the V&A Museum, Institute of Contemporary Arts, and Turner Contemporary, and are currently expanding internationally. Diasporas Now has been funded by the Arts Council England, and has lectured at the Royal College of Art, the University of the Arts London: Central Saint Martins, and the University of Cambridge. @diasporas_now
