Category Archives: Featured Posts
Exhibit at Museo del Barrio: Playing With Fire
New Territories
The term “new territories,” as evoked by Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce, refers to the state of making in today’s globalized society, a phenomenon that has helped to spur a confluence of art, design and craft. The exhibition New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America examines this trend in several distinct cities throughout Latin America, where some of the most pertinent new directions in arts and design are emerging today.
New Territories explores the collaborations between small manufacturing operations and craftspersons, artists, and designers, and demonstrates how the resulting work addresses not only the issues of commodification and production, but also of urbanization, displacement and sustainability. The exhibition explores a number of key themes, including: the dialogue between contemporary trends and artistic legacies in Latin American art; the use of repurposed materials in strategies of upcycling; the blending of digital and traditional skills; and the reclamation of personal and public space.
New Territories is organized by MAD’s Chief Curator Lowery Stokes Sims and Adriana Kertzer, Curatorial Assistant and Project Manager. It follows MAD’s groundbreaking 2010 exhibition The Global Africa Project, which presented new craft, design, and art that transcended nationality and regionalism in its presentation of the new nomadic paradigm of African identity. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, full color catalogue that will be published in separate English and Spanish editions by Turner Libros of Madrid and Mexico City.
Major support for New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America is provided by the Ford Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. Additional support is provided by Karen and Charles Phillips, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, The Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts, the Consulate General of Brazil in New York, The Louise D. and Morton J. Macks Family Foundation, the Mex-Am Cultural Foundation, the Consulate General of Argentina in New York, The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and Ch.ACO, Contemporary Art Fair of Chile. Support for the exhibition website is provided by Phillips. Opening reception is sponsored by Corona and Jose Cuervo.
Specters of Communism: Contemporary Russian Art
– See more at: http://centerforthehumanities.org/exhibition/specters-communism-contemporary-russian-art#sthash.xxecduMO.dpuf
Curated by Boris Groys, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University.
Join us for the opening reception on Friday, February 6, 6-8pm.
In contemporary Russia, where official political and cultural attitudes have become increasingly conservative, a new generation of Russian artists continue the critical tradition of the Russian Left and utopianism of the Russian avant-garde. Taking up this desire to change reality by means of art, they explore ideals of equality and social justice, radical politics, secularism and internationalism, without forgetting the long history of post-revolutionary violence. Guest curated by Boris Groys and held at both the James Gallery and e-flux exhibition space downtown, this exhibition includes the works of artists from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and New York.
This exhibition is organized in collaboration with e-flux, where art by Anton Ginzburg, Pussy Riot, and Arseny Zhilyaev is on view.
Opening at e-flux: Tue, Feb 10, 6-8pm
8pm: Anton Vidokle, The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun
e-flux location of the exhibition on view: Wed, Feb 11 – Sat, Mar 28
311 East Broadway
PLAYING WITH FIRE: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions
PLAYING WITH FIRE: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions
September 6, 2014 – February 7, 2015
Tracing the founding of El Museo del Barrio by Raphael Montañez Ortíz at the end of the 60s, an era of social unrest and radical activism in the United States as well as throughout the Americas, the works in this exhibition target colonialism, imperialism, urban neglect, and cultural hegemony with a vast array of weapons, including irreverence and humor. The artists confront the status quo with a wide range of disarming conceptual strategies and aesthetic detonators. The fire that surfaces in some of the artworks points to an equally dangerous and alluring element that consumes and transforms, one that must be handled with care.
Playing with Fire: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions purposely welcomes impolite, undomesticated, rebellious, hilarious, and even sacrilegious discourses and gestures that stick out their tongues at oppressive systems and push for the re-politicization of society and the art space.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: ADAL, Manuel Acevedo, Maris Bustamante, Nao Bustamante, Papo Colo, Abigail DeVille, Alejandro Diaz, Adonis Flores, Ester Hernández, Javier Hinojosa (b. 1956, México, D.F.) with the collaboration of Melquiades Herrera (Mexico, D.F., 1949-2003), Jessica Kairé, Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, Carlos Ortíz, Pedro Pietri, Jesús Natalio Puras Penzo (APECO), Quintín Rivera Toro, Juan Sánchez.
The exhibition, as part of El Museo’s Carmen Ana Unanue gallery is guest curated by multi-disciplinary artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez.
Black Banana: Exhibitions of Absence
Black Banana: Exhibitions of Absence – the paper
by Novel ‘Idea’ Sholars and Maira Nolasco
PDF:blackbananaExhibitionsofAbsencepaperdraft2
Introduction
Black Banana is the examination of structural racism in art curation and it’s effects on descendants of Africa living in Latin America. Acting as a metaphor, it sheds light on the absence of those of the African Diaspora in the workforce, and as a part of the overall Latin American cultural project. What are the histories of these erasures, and how does this history prove the existence of a racist hegemony that results in cultural exclusion? When did the whitening of Latin America begin and how does this whitening affect the economy of the black populations as well as their integration into Latin American society? Is the lack of Black Latino representation proof of racist curatorial practices in the Latin American contemporary art world? These are the questions this project hopes to explore. The Black Banana focus is to create awareness around the possible denial of racism and how that denial effects who and what is curated. Ultimately the goal is to provoke an open dialog about identity, hybridity, and access. Continue reading Black Banana: Exhibitions of Absence
FINAL – Black Banana: Exhibitions of Absence – the paper
Introduction
Black Banana is a brief examination of structural racism in art curation and it’s effects on descendants of Africa living in Latin America. Acting as a metaphor, it sheds light on the absence of those of the African Diaspora in the workforce, and as a part of the overall Latin American cultural project. What are the histories of these erasures, and how does this history prove the existence of a racist hegemony that results in cultural exclusion? When did the whitening of Latin America begin and how does this whitening affect the economy of the black populations as well as their integration into Latin American society? Ultimately, is the lack of Black Latino representation proof of racist curatorial practices in the Latin American contemporary art world? The Black Banana focus is to create awareness around the possible denial of racism and how that denial effects who and what is curated. Ultimately the goal is to provoke an open dialog about identity, hybridity, and access.
PDF below
THE MURALS IN GUATEMALA AS MEMORY AND RESISTANCE
Memory initiatives have served several purposes: to recover the memory of what happened and make public denunciations, dignity and honor the memory of the victims, promote community organization and social reconstruction, inform and educate new generations, and to demand redress and justice. This paper focus on Guatemalan murals as a memory initiative and as an art form used by the direct victims of the conflict.