Descripción de la Exposición
El Museo del Barrio is pleased to announce the list of more than 40 Latinx artists and collectives from across the United States and Puerto Rico who will be participating in the upcoming exhibition, ESTAMOS BIEN - LA TRIENAL 20/21. The selection is the culmination of more than one year of studio visits and conversations with artists from across the country by the Curatorial Team composed of El Museo del Barrio’s Chief Curator Rodrigo Moura and Curator Susanna V. Temkin, and New York-based artist Elia Alba as Guest Curator. The show is the museum’s first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art. ESTAMOS BIEN - LA TRIENAL 20/21 will debut in Las Galerías from March 13, 2021 to August 22, 2021.
“El Museo has historically maintained a very productive relationship with the art of the present and it is in this spirit that we are so excited to share a fantastic list of artists and collectives participating in the Trienal. We have deeply focused on the outstanding quality of their works and it is a true honor to offer this platform to enable a visual conversation between them. Presenting a major survey of Latinx art today is not only urgent. It is also a great opportunity to continue proving its relevance nationally and globally,” says El Museo del Barrio’s Chief Curator, Rodrigo Moura.
ESTAMOS BIEN - LA TRIENAL 20/21 represents a newly reconceived version of the critically acclaimed exhibition series, The (S) Files, held at El Museo between 1999 and 2013, which provided a platform for Latinx and Latin American artists working in the metro-New York area. Expanded to a nation-wide scope, La Trienal foregrounds an intersectional approach to Latinx identity, including artists and collectives from different generations, genders, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Featuring artworks created after the year 2000, the show includes painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, photography, ceramics, textile, and performance. While the exhibition eschews any overarching thematics, many of the artists address issues related to gentrification and commercialization; family—both chosen and inherited; identity and structural racism; migration and displacement; and climate and ecological justice; among other topics.
"While ESTAMOS BIEN was already in formation, these concepts have only grown more pressing in light of the global pandemic and its effects on BIPOC communities, as well as this country’s growing recognition of Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements in the wake of the deaths of Breona Taylor, George Floyd and so many others,” notes Curator Susanna V. Temkin. “ESTAMOS BIEN has therefore taken on new meaning, and as the title suggests, reflects both sarcasm and serves as a provocation.”
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, replete with political and pop cultural references.
Commenting on the significance of the show at this particular moment, Guest Curator and Artist Elia Alba affirmed, “Latinx art doesn’t rely or depend on a binary. It mixes social histories and spans the color ranges of race. As society pushes against the binaries that have marginalized BIPOC for centuries, now more than ever, these surveys are a must as they lay bare what is possible. Latinx art, call it a movement, call it a space, challenges us to question the inflexibility of language and systems.”
Originally scheduled for Fall 2020, La Trienal transitioned into a year-long initiative, with the exhibition making its debut in summer 2020 with a series of online projects by artists Lizania Cruz, xime izquierdo ugaz, Collective Magpie, Michael Menchaca, and Poncilí Creación launched between July and October. These and all artists will form part of the physical iteration next spring, occupying all the exhibition spaces of El Museo.
The full list of selected artists for ESTAMOS BIEN - LA TRIENAL 20/21:
Francis Almendárez (b. 1987, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Houston, TX); Candida Alvarez (b. 1955, Brooklyn, NY; lives and works in Chicago, IL); Eddie R. Aparicio (b. 1990, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA); Fontaine Capel (b. 1990, Brooklyn, NY; lives and works in Queens, NY); Carolina Caycedo (b. 1978, London, UK, raised in Colombia; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA); Juan William Chavez (b. 1977, Lima, Peru; lives and works in St. Louis MO); Yanira Collado (b. 1975, Brooklyn, NY; lives and works in Miami, FL), Collective Magpie (Based in San Diego, CA); Lizania Cruz (b. 1983, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY); Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski (b. 1985, Bordeaux, France, raised across the East Coast, Midwest, and Southern U.S.; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY); Dominique Duroseau (b. 1978, Chicago, IL and raised in Haiti; lives and works in Newark, NJ); Justin Favela (b. 1986, Las Vegas, NV; lives and works in Las Vegas, NV); Luis Flores (b. 1985, West Covina, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA); ektor garcia (b. 1985, Red Bluff, CA; lives and works nomadically); Maria Gaspar (b. 1980, Chicago, IL; lives and works in Chicago, IL); Victoria Gitman (b. 1972, Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives and works in Hallandale Beach, FL); Antonio Gomez (b. 1965, Mexico; lives and works in Las Vegas, NV); Manuela Gonzalez (b. 1983, Miami, FL, raised in Medellín, Colombia; lives and works in New York, NY); Lucia Hierro (b. New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY); xime izquierdo ugaz (b. 1992, Lima, Peru; lives and works in New York, NY, and Lima, Peru); The Museum of Pocket Art (Established 2004 in El Paso, TX; based in Austin, TX); Esteban Jefferson (b. 1989, New York, NY; lives and works in New York, NY); Roberto Lugo (b. 1981, Philadelphia, PA; lives and works in Philadelphia, PA); Carlos Martiel (b. 1989, Havana, Cuba; lives and works in New York, NY); Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA); Yvette Mayorga (b. 1991, Silvis and raised in Moline, IL; lives and works in Chicago, IL); Groana Melendez (b. 1984, raised between New York City and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; lives and works in the Bronx, NY); María Jose (b. 1992, Caguas, Puerto Rico; lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico); Michael Menchaca (b. 1985, San Antonio, TX; lives and works in San Antonio, TX); Dionis Ortiz (b. 1979, Harlem, NY; lives and works in Washington Heights, NY); Poncilí Creación (Based in San Juan, Puerto Rico); Postcommodity (Based in the Southwest); Simonette Quamina (b. 1982, Ontario, Canada; lives and works in New York, NY); Vick Quezada (b. 1979, El Paso, TX; lives and works in Northampton, MA); Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975, National City, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA); Yelaine Rodriguez (b. 1990, Bronx, NY; lives and works in the Bronx, NY); Nyugen E. Smith (b. 1976, Jersey City, NJ; lives and works in Jersey City, NJ); Edra Soto (b. 1971, Puerto Rico; lives and works in Chicago, IL); Ada Trillo (b. 1976, El Paso, TX; lives and works in Philadelphia, PA); Joey Terrill (b. 1955, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA); Torn Apart/Separados (Active in the United States); Vincent Valdez (b. 1977, San Antonio, TX; lives and works in Houston, TX); and Raelis Vasquez (b. 1995, Mao Valverde, Dominican Republic; lives and works in New York, NY).
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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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.
Exposición. 13 mar de 2021 - 26 sep de 2021 / El Museo del Barrio / Nueva York, New York, Estados Unidos
Exposición. 13 dic de 2024 - 04 may de 2025 / CAAC - Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo / Sevilla, España
Formación. 01 oct de 2024 - 04 abr de 2025 / PHotoEspaña / Madrid, España
