Latin@merica: Embedding Bodies and Localities offers the possibility of rethinking how traditional place-based affiliations and notions of cultural identity end up reproduced, reaffirmed, or even transformed in the digital realm. The exhibition aims to highlight how technology has had an impact in the construction of Latin American identity and its networked localities. New forms of negotiation between the local and the global, between the virtual and the real are constantly being elaborated by the presented works, leading to new ways of understanding what it means to be Latinx and/or Latin American in a contemporary digital field.
Alexandra Gelis, Ana Maria Millán, Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta interrogate some of the keyplace-based concerns of Latinx identity through their on-and offline cultural practice. Using new media technologies, these artists express alternative viewpoints about the places they represent allowing people to make important connections to their physical and offline locations. This tactical interplay between virtual and real space to construct new formulations of territorial identity and new cartographies of urban/rural space, give voice to oppositional discussions through new media technologies, alternative modes of expression and dissemination.
The artists in Latin@merica engage in re-appropriations and re-imaginings of globalizing technologies, providing space for the expression of resistance discourses and towards the recuperation of cultural memory.
Curated by Claudia Arana
Co-presented with Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts
Sur Gallery
Toronto, Canada
April 1 - May 29, 2021
THE NOVELS OF ELSGÜER
(EPISODE 3)
LIVE DESPECHO
For the duo artists Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta, The Novels of Elsgüer is a collaborative project in which Laura’s fiber-based practice interacts with Santiago’s digitally animated explorations to develop immersive experiences through the interaction of new media components such as mapping projections, virtual/augmented reality and live performance.
In Episode 3 - Live Despecho, the duo explores how concepts of dislocation, translation and migration affect bodies who are constantly crossing borders (both physical and virtual ones). By offering multidimensional spaces, the body becomes an overstimulated element in constant flux who is being observed and monitored by a CCTV system which documents its performance while is being virtually immersed in a surreal borderless suburban environment. The duality of been physically and virtually present at different locations simultaneously allows the audience to reveal their own views regarding not only the physical paradigm of the virtual realm, but the effects exerted by systems that monitor and analyze these behaviours in a data-driven economy often regulated by omnipresent states of power.
Photos x ©Ready2Post
Curator Tour with Claudia Arana
Tuesday, April 6, 6-8pm on Zoom ET
Video Interviews with Eva Salinas
In separate discussions with Eva Salinas, artists Alexandra Gelis, Ana Maria Millán, Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta discuss their current work and their relationship to the identities of Latinx, artist and worker, especially in a time of uncertainty and precarity. These short video interviews provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the exhibit and the creators of the respective works.