'Nahlla: Latin Surrealism' is not a show you simply watch. You enter it. You feel it. And for an hour, you agree to dream alongside her.
Presented at Nexus Arts, this immersive live music work from Colombian-Australian artist Nahlla builds on her growing reputation in Adelaide’s experimental and multicultural music scene. Following appearances at the National Suicide Prevention Conference, Interplay 2025, and the Adelaide Fringe Cultivate residency, this latest work feels like a culmination.
At its core, 'Latin Surrealism' is a story about feeling out of place. About being trapped inside a version of yourself that no longer fits. About searching for something spiritual, emotional, ancestral, that might offer release.
This meaning is never explained outright. It is shown.
Early in the performance, Nahlla is caught in a hanging blue net. It evokes a fish struggling for air. There is sadness here. There is suffocation. There is a sense of being held in a world that does not understand you.
From there, the work unfolds as a dream.
A suitcase appears. It becomes a symbol of movement, risk, migration. Of choosing to leave. Of choosing to become. Nahlla’s journey is not linear. It drifts between memory, mythology, and imagination. She calls on Chía, the Muisca goddess of the moon, not as a distant figure, but as a source of healing and strength. A presence to guide her through uncertainty.
The stage is a surrealist rainforest. Handmade set pieces, soft, textures, glowing, surround her. Fairy lights flicker through the space. On screen, Nahlla’s own video work pulses with colour and symbolism. Fish flap in nets. Birds emerge from shadow. A mirror reflects another reality, one where the audience sees her back and she sees something else entirely.
It is a world where logic dissolves. Emotion leads.
Her five-piece band is tight and responsive. The rhythms are rich and layered. Cumbia, bambuco, bullerengue and salsa blend with Latin pop and rock. The percussion introduces textures rarely heard on mainstream stages here. It feels both grounded in tradition and alive in the present. The music does not just accompany the story. It carries it.
Nahlla herself is a compelling performer. Her voice moves between vulnerability and power. Her physicality is striking. She dances. She reaches. She collapses and rises again. Often, she lets movement, music, and imagery do the work instead of explaining it. This is especially important given English is not her first language. But more than that, it feels like a deliberate choice.
There is a tendency in contemporary cabaret to demand clarity. To expect artists to name their trauma. To spell out the cause of their pain. This show resists that. Nahlla offers symbols instead of answers. The fish in the net. The woman who is both bird and sea creature. The dream she does not want to wake from.
And the audience meets her there.
By the end, the boundary between performer and audience softens. People sing. They move. Some join her on stage. The dream expands to include everyone in the room. It becomes communal. It becomes alive.
A particularly striking moment arrives when a masked partner enters and places a golden crown on Nahlla’s head. It reads as love. As acceptance. As self-recognition. A quiet transformation.
There are moments where the show could tighten. At times, lyrics drift slightly out of sync with the band. Some set pieces obscure the screen from certain angles.
But these are minor disruptions in a work that is otherwise deeply felt and visually rich.
'Latin Surrealism' is about finding a way through. Through sadness. Through displacement. Through the inherited weight of history and identity. It is about choosing to keep going. To keep creating. To keep dreaming.
And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that not everything needs to be explained to be understood. Some things just need to be felt.
