Descripción de la Exposición
The museum’s first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art debuts with online artists’ projects
Online artists projects | July 23 – October 15, 2020
On-site Exhibition | March 13 – August 22, 2021
NEW YORK, NY, July 10, 2020 – El Museo del Barrio announces ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21, the museum’s first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art featuring more than 40 artists from across the United States and Puerto Rico. Curated by El Museo del Barrio’s Chief Curator Rodrigo Moura and Curator Susanna V. Temkin, with New York-based artist Elia Alba as Guest Curator, the show, which was originally planned for Fall 2020, has been reconceived and expanded in light of the current moment. Now a yearlong initiative, the exhibition will debut this summer with online projects by artists Lizania Cruz, Xime Izquierdo Ugaz, Collective Magpie, Michael Menchaca, and Poncilí Creación. In Spring 2021, the onsite exhibition will open in Las Galerías (Galleries) at El Museo del Barrio. Related public programs featuring curators, artists, invited scholars and other guests will take place throughout the year.
“This exhibition is the result of intensive research conducted over the course of a year by the curatorial team throughout the country. ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21 takes the pulse of artistic production by Latinx artists at a time when a show like this is more relevant than ever,” explains Moura.
ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21 is inspired by the critically acclaimed and historic The (S) Files exhibitions held at El Museo between 1999 and 2013, which provided a platform for emerging Latino and Latin American artists from the New York metropolitan region. Reconceived as a Triennial, the exhibition has expanded its scope to a national scale for the first time, including artists from California, Texas, Florida, Chicago, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, as well as from the Tristate Area. Utilizing an intersectional approach to Latinx identity, the Curatorial team has selected artists who represent a diversity of generations, genders, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. The full list of participating artists will be released in October 2020.
Reflecting on her role as an alumnus of The (S) Files and her role as guest curator, Alba states, “The exhibition (The (S) Files) gave me a place of belonging and at the same time, unified a group of like-minded yet different individuals, with a shared experience in New York. Moving the exhibition from regional to national, expands the notions of community and place.”
This first iteration of La Trienal borrows its title, ESTAMOS BIEN, from the work of participating artist Candida Alvarez, a former member of El Museo’s curatorial team in the 1970s and the only artist in the show with a previous exhibition history with the institution. Her painting Estoy Bien (2017) takes its title from the resilient and obliquely sarcastic response to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Now pluralized, the phrase resonates with the present-day moment, as the works in the exhibition address issues of race and identity politics, gentrification and displacement, climate change, as well as the particular effects of the global pandemic to Latinx and other BIPOC populations.
“This landmark exhibition demonstrates El Museo del Barrio’s commitment to championing the voices, stories and lived experiences of Latinx artists in the United States. We invite audiences to challenge established truths, unpack authentic narratives, and see themselves reflected in the works of art presented,” asserts Patrick Charpenel, Executive Director, El Museo del Barrio.
ONLINE ARTISTS’ PROJECTS
Employing a hybrid approach, ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21 debuts this summer with a selection of online artist projects by selected exhibition artists: Lizania Cruz, Xime Izquierdo Ugaz, Collective Magpie, Michael Menchaca, and Poncilí Creación. Released between July and October, and fully accessible to the public, the digital projects span live performances; an interactive social platform; a photographic archive; a participatory survey; and video. The series begins on July 23rd with Lizania Cruz’s Obituaries of The American Dream, a participatory project that considers how the ideal’s roots in individualism and hard work pertains to U.S. society today, especially in the context of a pandemic. The project invites participants, locally and globally, non-im/migrants and im/migrants, to share testimonies of when and how the American Dream died for them.
“Our current moment has made us all increasingly aware of the importance of online access and communication. Launched in advance of the onsite exhibition, these digital projects reflect artists’ response to urgent issues: the effects of the global pandemic, race, the U.S. census, as well as the upcoming election,” says Temkin.
SCHEDULE – Dates forthcoming
Obituary for the American Dream | Lizania Cruz | Launched - July 23
Somxs Poder Seremos | Poncilí Creación | Live performance - August
Who Designs Your Race? | Collection Magpie | Launched - September
Retratos | Xime Izquierdo Ugaz | Launched - September
The Wall | Michael Menchaca | | Launched October
CURATORS’ BIOS
Elia Alba is a multidisciplinary artist, who works in sculpture, photography and video. She has exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Smithsonian Museum of Art, Washington D.C.; Perez Art Museum Miami; National Museum of Art, Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the 10th Havana Biennial. Alba has received the Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in Residence Program; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and most recently the Anonymous Was A Woman award. A published author, her recent book, Elia Alba, The Supper Club, (Hirmer, June 2019), critically acclaimed by The New York Times and produced by the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, brought together artists, scholars and performers of diasporic cultures to examine race and culture in the United States through photography, food and dialogue.
Rodrigo Moura is a curator, writer and editor working in contemporary and modern art and currently serving as Chief Curator at El Museo del Barrio, New York. As the Adjunct Curator of Brazilian Art at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand between 2016 and 2019, he curated and co-curated exhibitions such as Djanira: Picturing Brazil (2019), Melvin Edwards: Lynch Fragments (2018), Who’s afraid of Teresinha Soares? (2017), and Portinari Popular (2016). Prior to this, he was the Artistic Director of Instituto Inhotim (Minas Gerais, Brasil) between 2014 and 2015, where he also worked as a curator between 2004 and 2013. Independently, he has curated critically acclaimed exhibitions such as Time Kills: Moving Image from the Julia Stoscheck Collection (Sesc Paulista, 2019), Visiones de la tierra / El Mundo Planeado: Coleccion Luis Paulo Montenegro (Santander Art Room, Madrid, 2018), Mauro Restiffe: Album (Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2017), DOUBLES, DOBROS, PLIEGUES, PARES, TWINS, MITADES (The Warehouse, Dallas, 2017), artevida (several venues, Rio de Janeiro, 2014) and LINES (Hauser & Wirth Zurich, 2014), among several others.
Susanna Temkin is a Curator at El Museo del Barrio, where she most recently organized the museum’s fiftieth anniversary exhibition, Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019, drawing from objects from the Permanent Collection. Prior to this, she served as Assistant Curator at Americas Society in New York, as well as the research and archive specialist at the Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., where she assisted in co-authoring the digital catalogue raisonné of artist Joaquín Torres- García. Temkin earned her master’s and PhD degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where her research concentrated on modern art in the Americas, with a focus on Cuba. She has published essays and reviews in the Rutgers Art Review, Burlington Magazine, and Hemispheres, and authored the chronology of Concrete Cuba: Cuba Geometric Abstraction from the 1950s, produced by David Zwirner Books.
ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21 is made possible by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation. Leadership support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Generous funding is provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, Tony Bechara, and La Trienal Council.
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