WANAFOTO: Latin America and contemporary art @ Denver Art Museum

03/11/22

Latin America and contemporary art @ Denver Art Museum - Who tells a tale adds a tail

Who tells a tale adds a tail

Latin America and contemporary art

Denver Art Museum

Through March 5, 2023

JUAN FUENTES

Westwood Kids, 2020

Because several works in this exhibition are site-specific, the images in this post are prior works by the artists.

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) presents Who tells a tale adds a tail: Latin America and contemporary art, an exhibition featuring mostly site-specific, commissioned artworks by emerging artists in dialogue with the unique architecture of the museum’s Frederic C. Hamilton Building designed by Daniel Libeskind.

The exhibition highlights the work of 19 contemporary artists connected to Latin America and the ways in which their work reflects and interacts with relevant themes ranging from technology to ideas surrounding identity, to broader social and political issues. The exhibition is presented in the museum’s Modern and Contemporary Art galleries on level four and around the Denver Art Museum campus.

Organized by the DAM, Who tells a tale adds a tail is the first major exhibition curated at the museum by Raphael Fonseca, the DAM’s inaugural Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art, who currently resides in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 19 participating millennial-generation artists from countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico, have developed work that creates new worlds and realities, inviting spectators to engage in narratives through a multitude of media: painting, sculpture, installation, textile, video, sound, digital and performance art.

VITÓRIA CRIBB

@ilusão, 2020

VITÓRIA CRIBB lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and was born in 1996. Notable recent shows include Futuração (Galeria Aymoré, Rio de Janeiro, 2021), Disembodied Behaviors (Bitforms Gallery, New York and Newart City, online, 2020), and The Brazil that I Want (Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, online, 2020). She graduated from the Superior School of Industrial Design at UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is the daughter of a Haitian father and a Brazilian mother. In recent years, she has been creating digital and visual narratives that utilize techniques such as the creation of 3D avatars, filters in augmented reality and immersive environments, using the digital environment to explain her investigations and current issues covered by the subconscious. In 2020, she was invited to design an exclusive lens for Spectacles 3, Augmented Reality glasses by Snap Inc. In January 2021, the artist joined the Snap Lens Network as Official Lens Creator of Snapchat. Currently, Cribb works as an XR artist for the technology and fashion industry with clients such as IoDF, Mutantboard, Snap Inc., and Spectacles.

“Each of the participating artists has an incredible body of work, and their site-responsive installations for Who tells a tale adds a tail will activate the Hamilton Building with their own voices and lenses on the contemporary Latin American experience,” said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. “This one-of-a-kind exhibition demonstrates the DAM’s commitment to shaping the museum into a space where multiple voices and perspectives are presented in our galleries, encouraging open-spirited conversations inspired by the works on view.”

Reflecting this theme of interaction between artist and audience, the exhibition title is inspired by a proverb from Fonseca’s homeland, Brazil. “Quem conta um conto, aumenta um ponto” directly translates to “who adds a tale, adds a point,” stressing the significance of pushing a momentum forward by continuing a conversation, something each of these artists strives to do through their work. The exhibition is designed to demonstrate how the ideas of storytelling and dialogue are essential to contemporary art practice; many of the pieces on view incorporate elements from the artists’ own life stories or historical narratives and invite the visitor to create their own stories and responses to the works.

ANA SEGOVIA

I was never really ready, 2021

Oil paint on canvas

ANA SEGOVIA was born in Mexico City in 1991, where she lives and works. She has had five solo shows in the USA and Mexico, most recently opening the show Pos’ se acabó este cantar at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City (2021). Her works are part of the collections of notable institutions including The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and Alumnos 47 in Mexico City. Ana Segovia investigates the forms of circulation, representation and performativity of identity, mainly within Mexican popular culture. In her painterly practice, which has recently incorporated video, Ana Segovia develops comic and aesthetic strategies that challenge and break gender norms. Ana Segovia earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is currently represented by Galería Karen Huber in Mexico City.

Featured artists in the exhibition include:

Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio (Los Angeles, b. 1990)

ASMA (Mexico – Ecuador, b. 2017)

Adrián Balseca (Ecuador, b. 1989)

Seba Calfuqueo (Chile, b. 1991)

Gabriel Chaile (Argentina, b. 1985)

Vitória Cribb (Brazil, b. 1996)

Juan Fuentes (México/Denver, b. 1990)

Claudia Martinez Garay (Peru, b. 1983)

Juan Pablo Garza (Venezuela, b. 1980)

Hulda Guzmán (Dominican Republic, b. 1984)

Caleb Hahne Quintana (Denver, b. 1993)

Randolpho Lamonier (Brazil, b. 1988)

Tessa Mars (Haiti, b. 1985)

Andrés Pereira Paz (Bolivia, b. 1986)

Antonio Pichillá (Guatemala, b. 1982)

Gabriela Pinilla (Colombia, b. 1982)

Ana Segovia (México, b. 1991)

Alan Sierra (México, b. 1990)

Yuli Yamagata (Brazil, b. 1989)

“The artists come from diverse backgrounds representing different Latin American countries and communities, and their work presents vivid and complex perspectives that may be new to museum visitors,” said curator Raphael Fonseca. “The exhibition explores questions of what it means to inhabit identities such as Latin American, Latinx, indigenous or native, or queer, within the context of present-day phenomena like global hegemony, pandemics, climate change, and assault on human and civil rights.”

Dynamics between nature and extractivism, the power relations between different geographies around the globe and the history of natural resources in their countries and regions are among the themes explored by the artists in Who tells a tale adds a tail. Several of the artists’ works deal with the relations between images and texts, the juxtaposition of ideas and concepts to express contradictory realities in their own lives.

Born between 1981 and 1996, the artists belong to the first generation in history to have grown up totally immersed in a world of digital technology, and experience that uniquely shaped their identities and created lasting political, social and cultural attitudes and perspectives. Presenting millennial points of view and narratives via a multitude of media, the artists in Who tells a tale adds a tail push forward and challenge conversations on violence, domination and destruction of different cultures from colonial eras to contemporary times. Several of the artists’ works present the juxtaposition of ideas and concepts to express contradictory realities in their own lives, while other works utilize historical images, which are appropriated and then inserted into new narratives.

“The power of this exhibition is in the combination of what ties the artists and their works together, as well as what separates and distinguishes them,” said Raphael Fonseca. “In spite of this geographical and generational umbrella, the works in the show are much more extensive than anyone could expect. These artists show how the same generation related to a geography can have so many different approaches to art, the idea of fiction, the use of existent images to invoke new ideas and the appeal to the human body are topics explored throughout.”

GABRIELA PINILLA

Barrio Policarpa, 2012

GABRIELA PINILLA, born in Colombia in 1982, lives and works in Bogotá. Her solo exhibitions include Giovanna Fotógrafa de Revoluciones, Museo de Antioquia, (Medellín 2019); La sotana y la espada, NADA (Bogotá 2019); Roja muy roja, La Silueta (Bogotá 2017); Héroes y Tumbas, Espacio Odeón (Bogotá 2016); El Ramo de olivo que no germinó, Valenzuela y Klenner (Bogotá, 2015); and La venganza de la historia 3: Barrio Policarpa, Valenzuela Klenner (Bogotá, 2012). She holds a BFA from the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (Bogotá, Colombia) and an MFA from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia). She is an Art History professor at Universidad Externado de Colombia and at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, both in Bogotá, Colombia. Gabriela Pinilla is currently represented by (bis) oficina de proyectos in Cali, Colombia.

YULI YAMAGATA

Summer sweaty dream, 2021.

Elastane, velvet, felt, silk, silicone fiber, sewing thread

courtesy of Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro

YULI YAMAGATA was born in São Paulo in 1989. Her recent solo shows include Insônia (São Paulo, 2021), Bruxa (Lisbon, 2020), and Microwave Your Friends (Cluj, Romania, 2019). She has also shown in several group shows such as Samba in the Dark (New York, 2020), Esqueci de acordar (Panama City, 2020), Rocambole (Lisbon, 2019), and Pivô (São Paulo, 2018). Loaded with references to the gore universe (a subgenre of horror), Yuli Yamagata’s work conceives hybrid creatures—part human, part animal, part monster—usually represented by fragments. Complex arrays of cut-out fabrics, paints and other materials become a field for displaying feet, hands, bones, claws and eyeballs. From the articulation of materials at first sight prosaic, the artist weaves reflections on contemporary pop culture, exploring the visual limits of kitsch and reflecting on pre-established concepts of good and bad taste. Yuli Yamagata holds a BFA from the University of São Paulo, having majored in sculpture. She is represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in Brazil, and Madragoa in Portugal.

JUAN FUENTES

Mi Raza, 2017

JUAN FUENTES was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1990 and raised in Denver’s Northside, where he resides and works. He was selected as one of Redline Contemporary’s artists for the Education Partnership Initiative for the Creative Arts Program (EPIC Arts) in 2020. In October 2021, Juan Fuentes organized a collaborative photography project with the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) at Anythink Fall Artist Showcase. His kinship to the barrio, Denver’s Northside, is evident within his photography, installations, and community projects, which explore the intimate, everyday life of immigrants and Chicanos in the U.S. A self-taught artist, Juan Fuentes examines the visual and emotional artifacts of memory, erasure and family—creating records that affirm and center marginalized communities.

TESSA MARS

Untitled, Praying for the visa, 2019

TESSA MARS was born in 1985 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She debuted her solo show Île modèle-Manman zile-Island template with le Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, in 2019, and participated in the Berlin Biennale X in 2018. Tessa Mars completed a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at Rennes 2 University in France in 2006. Mars’s artistry proposes storytelling and image making as transformative strategies for survival, resistance, empowerment and healing. Her main body of work centers on her alter ego, Tessalines, a hybrid character based on the leader of the Haitian revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Through this character, created in 2015, Tessa Mars investigates gender, history and traditions, challenging dominant narratives that seek to simplify and flatten the experience of people in the “margins.” Tessa Mars’s work has been shown recently in the group exhibition One month after being known on that island (2020) at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger in Basel. She is a 2020-2022 resident fellow at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

ALAN SIERRA

Sin título (Mapa de México)

[Untitled (Map of Mexico)], 2020

ALAN SIERRA was born in Sonora, Mexico, in 1990 and currently lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. He recently exhibited works across Tijuana, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. Sierra is versed in writing, editing and curating; his body of work includes texts, drawings, sculptures and performances that stretch conventional narratives and explore the lyrical possibilities of images. From 2019 to 2021, he participated in SOMA’s Educational Program. He is currently enrolled in the MA program at Institut Kunst Gender Natur in Basel, Switzerland.

HULDA GUZMÁN

wednesday morning, 2019.

Arcylic gouache on canvas; 48 x 88½ in.

Collection of Gretchen and John Berggruen, San Francisco.

HULDA GUZMÁN was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1984, where she lives and works. Her pieces are included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil; Patricia Phelps de Cisneros; and Centro Leon Jimenes, among others. She received a BA from Altos de Chavón School of Design in the Dominican Republic and studied photography and mural painting at the National School of Visual Arts, Mexico. Hulda Guzmán has been featured in the Dominican Republic’s pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. She has shown with Dio Horia Gallery (Mykonos), Arte BA (Buenos Aires), Galería Machete (Mexico City), Gallery Ariane Paffrath (Dusseldorf), and at institutions such as Museo de Arte Moderno (Santo Domingo), the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Museo de Arte de São Paulo (Brazil), Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (Costa Rica), and Art Museum of the Americas (Washington, D.C.). Hulda Guzmán is currently represented by Dio Horia Gallery in Mykonos, Greece.

CALEB HAHNE QUINTANA

Limpia, 2021

Oil paint, acrylic paint, flashe, and wax on canvas

CALEB HAHNE QUINTANA was born in Denver in 1993 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His debut solo show, The Earth, It Held Me, premiered November 2021 at 1969 Gallery in New York. He received a BFA in Fine Arts from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. His residencies include 1969 Gallery Residency, The Cabin LA, ShowPen, RedLine Contemporary Art Center, and Adventure Painting. Denver Westword named Hahne-Quintana one of the 100 Colorado Creatives of 2014 and one of the Top 10 Artists to watch in 2015 and he was listed as one of the top 10 contemporary artists under 40 by Widewalls. He is represented by 1969 Gallery in New York.

EDDIE RODOLFO APARICIO, born in 1990, lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Aparicio has held solo exhibitions at Los Angeles State Historic Park, Clockshop, Calif. (2021); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2020); Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico (2019); and The Mistaken Room, Los Angeles (2018). He received his MFA from Yale University in 2016, and a BA in Studio Art from Bard College in 2012. In 2016, the mixed-media artist attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is a past recipient of the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.

ASMA is the artist duo of Matias Armendaris and Hanya Beliá, based in Mexico City. Armendaris was born in Ecuador in 1990, and Beliá was born in Mexico in 1994. ASMA has exhibited internationally at Manifesta Biennial Marseille, Museo Tamayo in México City, and The Chicago Artist Coalition. Their works use allegorical figures and architectural spaces exploring formal interrelations between painterly and sculptural expressions. They employ fictional narratives which include a form of nature interwoven with psychoaffective contemporary landscapes. Combined, they hold an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Emily Carr University, as well as a BFA in Visual Arts from the Facultad de Artes y Diseño (UNAM). ASMA is represented by PEANA, based in Mexico.

ADRIÁN BALSECA lives and works in Quito, Ecuador, and was born in 1989. His recent exhibitions include Rethinking Nature (Museo MADRE, Napoli, 2021), 34th São Paulo Biennial: 'Though it's dark, still I sing' (Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, 2021), and PLANTASIA OIL Co. (Galería N24, Quito, 2021). Balseca’s art studies extractivism, its dynamics and environmental impacts. In 2019, he published MIRADOR: Visions on Extractivism (Ecuador 2007–2017), presenting a visual memory of indigenous leaders who have been criminalized since the entry of six megamining projects in Ecuador. He is represented by Galeria Madrago in Lisbon, Portugal.

Living and working in Santiago, Chile, SEBA CALFUQUEO (they/them) lives and works in Santiago, Chile. They were born in 1991 and are Mapuche in origin, an Indigenous group of inhabitants of present-day, south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina. Calfuqueo’s recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Patricia Ready Galería, Galería 80m2 Livia Benavides, Galería D21, Galería Metropolitana, Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Chile (MAC). Calfuqueo earned an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Chile, and they are part of the Mapuche collective in Rangiñtulewfü and Yene Revista. Their work appeals to their cultural inheritance to propose a critical reflection on the social, cultural and political status of the Mapuche traditions in contemporary Chilean society and throughout Latin America. Their work includes installation, ceramics, performance and video art exploring cultural dichotomies and the stereotypes produced from the interactions between indigenous and western ways of thinking. Calfuqueo was awarded the Municipalidad de Santiago award in 2017 and the Premio Fundación FAVA in 2018. They were honored with The Democracy Machine: Artists and Selfgovernance in the Digital Age award by Eyebeam, New York. Calfuqueo is represented by Patricia Ready in Santiago, Chile.

GABRIEL CHAILE was born in 1985 in Tucumán, Argentina, and currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. Most recently, he has exhibited in Me hablan de oscuridad pero yo estoy encandilado Genealogía de la forma, curated by Andrea Fernández (Barro, Buenos Aires, 2019); Diego, curated by Cecilia Alemani (Art Basel Cities, Buenos Aires, 2018); and Sonia (El ondulatorio, La Rioja, 2018). Chaile’s works hold a critical-poetical intersection between anthropology, the sacred and ritualistic, the political, and pre-Columbian communities of South America. He earned his BA in Fine Art from the Universidad de Tucumán and has participated in notable art fairs including Art Basel (Basilea), The Armory Show (New York), artBA (Buenos Aires), and Art Basel Miami Beach (Miami).

CLAUDIA MARTINEZ GARAY lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Lima, Perú. She was born in Ayacucho, Perú, in 1983, and her works deal with the socio-political memory and history of Perú, as well as its relationship with propaganda, iconography and official and unofficial visual archives. Her solo exhibitions include A las revoluciones, como a los árboles, se les reconoce por sus frutos (Revolutions, like trees are recognized by their fruits) at GRIMM, Amsterdam, 2019. She has shown in group shows in museums across New York, Sao Paulo, Japan and Chile. She has received multiple recognitions and grants including the LOOP Acquisition Award for best video presented at LOOP Fair Barcelona. Her works are part of notable international collections including the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, the AMC Art Collection, and various private collections in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She is represented by GRIMM Gallery (Amsterdam/New York).

JUAN PABLO GARZA was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, in 1980, and lives and works in Miami, Florida. His solo show, Reforma del Ahora (AL BORDE, Maracaibo, Venezuela; 2012), was selected as one of the best exhibitions of the year by Artforum. Garza works with an array of found objects and primary materials that he manipulates to create three-dimensional works and installations. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the Americas and Europe. Garza was co-founder and co-director of the Contemporary Art Space AL BORDE (Maracaibo, Venezuela; 2010-2014), which received a cultural support grant from the Fundación Cisneros/CPPC. Most recently, he completed a two-year studio residency through Oolite Arts (Miami Beach, Florida; 2017-2019) and was a collaborator in the artist-run space, Dimensions Variable (Miami, Florida, 2019-2020). In 2021, Juan Pablo Garza was a recipient of the South Florida Cultural Consortium Grant.

RANDOLPHO LAMONIER was born in Contagem, Brazil, in 1988 and is based in São Paulo. He participated in exhibitions and festivals in many cities, including New York City, London, Paris, and São Paulo. Randolpho Lamonier is a visual artist who graduated from Escola de Belas Artes of UFMG. His work moves between different mediums, especially textile art practice, drawing, photography, video and installation. In his research, the word and image are always in dialogue and usually verse on micro and macro politics, urbanities, sentimental stuff, chronicles, journals and multiple crossings between memory and fiction. He was awarded the Pipa Prize in Brazil in 2020 and he is represented by Fort Gansevoort (New York/Los Angeles) and Periscópio (Belo Horizonte, Brazil).

ANDRES PEREIRA PAZ, born in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1986, lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City. He was recently featured at the ''Future Generation Art Prize'' in Kiev, Art Basel Statements, the Brunand Gallery in Berlin, and the 11th Berlin Biennale. His works are in notable public collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, KADIST, San Francisco, and Instituto Alumnos, México. He has exhibited extensively across Latin America and Europe and is one of several artists and curators who are part of Bisagra in Lima. He is represented by brunand brunand in Berlin, 80m2 Livia Benavides in Lima and Isla Flotante in Buenos Aires.

ANTONIO PICHILLÁ was born in 1982 San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala, where he works today. He is Maya Tz´utujil, native to the midwestern highlands of Guatemala. Most recently, he participated in the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2021), and in a group show by Para/Site Art Space in Hong Kong. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Guatemala (1999-2003). Antonio Pichillá first exhibited his work in Poderes Ocultos in 2010, held at (Ex)Céntrico in Guatemala City. More recently, his works have been exhibited in shows across the United States, Germany and Guatemala. Most recently, Antonio Pichillá participated in the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2021) and in a group show by Para/Site Art Space in Hong Kong. He is represented by RoFa Gallery in Potomac, Maryland.

Who tells a tale adds a tail: Latin America and contemporary art is organized by the Denver Art Museum.

A companion publication was created featuring essays by Latin American curators of the same generation as the featured artists.

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