Some artists working today reflect on their centuries-old heritage by interweaving it with modernity, material culture, spirituality, and ecology. Artists in this exhibition grapple with these ideas in different ways. Some consider the relationship between indigeneity and Western appropriation (Claudia Martínez Garay) or between gender identity and ecology (Sebástian Calfuqueo). Others paint bodies in the landscape to investigate the diffusion of oral traditions (Tessa Mars) and the often surprising intersection of people and nature (Hulda Guzmán). For these artists, place is imbued with history and a sense of the unknown.
Claudia Martínez Garay
This video is captioned in English and Spanish.
Este video está subtitulado en inglés y español.
Claudia Martínez Garay was born in Ayacucho, Peru, 1983. Her works deal with the socio-political memory and history of Perú, and 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), and lives and works between Amsterdam and Lima.
Seba Calfuqueo
This video is captioned in English and Spanish.
Este video está subtitulado en inglés y español.
Born in Santiago, Chile in 1991, Sebastián Calfuqueo (they/them/their) earned an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Chile. They are part of the Mapuche collective in Rangiñtulewfü and Yene Revista. From Mapuche origin, Calfuqueo’s 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. 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 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 Self-governance in the Digital Age award by Eyebeam, New York. Calfuqueo is represented by Patricia Ready (Santiago, Chile). Calfuqueo lives and works in Santiago, Chile.
Tessa Mars
This video is captioned in English and Spanish.
Este video está subtitulado en inglés y español.
Tessa Mars (b. 1985) is a Haitian visual artist born and raised in Port-au-Prince. She 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, Mars investigates gender, history, and traditions, challenging dominant narratives that seek to simplify and flatten the experience of people in the “margins.” 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 and in her solo show Île modèle-Manman zile-Island template (2019) with le Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince. She also participated in the Berlin Biennale X in 2018. She is a 2020-2022 resident fellow at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.
Who tells a tale adds a tail: Latin America and contemporary art is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It is presented by the Birnbaum Social Discourse Project and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.
