Symposium | SITAC X: The Future: The Long Count Begins Again, Feb. 9,10 and 11, Mexico City

January 12, 2012

Grant | Carlos Motta is named 2012 Creative Capital Grantee

January 12, 2012

CREATIVE CAPITAL ANNOUNCES 2012 GRANTEES IN FILM/VIDEO AND VISUAL ARTS 
 

Creative Capital announces its 2012 grants in Film/Video and Visual Arts to 46 adventurous projects representing 56 artists. For the 2012 grantees, Creative Capital will provide up to $50,000 in direct project funding, plus advisory services valued at more than $40,000. With the addition of the 46 new grantees, Creative Capital will have committed nearly $25 million in financial and advisory support to artistssince 1999, including nearly $3 million in 2011 alone.

The 2012 Creative Capital grants in Film/Video are awarded to: Cam Archer,Robert Bahar & Almudena Carracedo, Amy Belk & Matt Porterfield, Brad Butler, Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel, Eric Dyer, Daniel Eisenberg, Yance Ford, Brian L. Frye & Penny Lane, Sonali Gulati, Kenneth Jacobs, Nina Menkes,Akosua Adoma Owusu, Brian Pera, Rick Prelinger, Michael Robinson, Mark Elijah Rosenberg, Norbert Shieh, Stacey Steers, Deborah Stratman, Jesse Sugarmann, Christopher Sullivan and Jake Yuzna. 

The 2012 Creative Capital grants in Visual Arts are awarded to: Janine Antoni, Raven Chacon & Nathan Young, Patty Chang, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Theaster Gates, Ken Gonzales-Day, Taraneh Hemami, Tahir Hemphill, Simone Leigh, Eric Leshinsky & Zach Moser, Phillip Andrew Lewis, Carlos Motta, My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon & Alexandro Segade), The Propeller Group (Matt Lucero & Tuan Andrew Nguyen), Teri Rofkar, Paul Rucker, Connie Samaras, Lisa Sigal, Jim Skuldt, Kerry Tribe, Joan Waltemath, Women (Scott Barry & Neil Doshi) and Amy Yao.  

Creative Capital is a premier provider of risk capital in the arts. In the past year, Creative Capital has re-invigorated its grantmaking process to emphasize the importance of risk-taking: taking chances on projects that are singularly bold, innovative, genre-stretching and of this moment; ideas of scope and ambition expressed through audacious combinations of form and content; varied projects that engage or even create new technologies; and works that take traditional approaches into new territories, teaching us something new about the world and ourselves.

“With this new class of 2012 grantees, we are thrilled to support work that is highly contemporary, daring, delightful and complex—work that astonishes with the richness of its ideas,” commented Ruby Lerner, Creative Capital’s President & Executive Director. “Creative Capital continually aims to support the latest thinking in the field, and this year’s grantees push the boundaries of visual arts, film and video.”

More info here

Conversation | Bulletin Board, January 15, 6pm

January 12, 2012

Exhibition | Carlos Motta: Deus Pobre: Modern Sermons of Communal Lament, Y Gallery, NY

November 24, 2011

November 22-December 23

Y Gallery
165 Orchard Street
Tue-Sun: 12-6pm 

DEUS POBRE: Modern Sermons of Communal Lament is a video installation based on a series of performative interventions in Catholic churches in Porto, Portugal. Six ordained priests —all of whom share an interest in the theology movement known as Liberation theology— read excerpts of key sermons and texts delivered by theologians and priests since the 17th Century.

Liberation theology emerged in the 1970s in Latin America —with developments in other parts of the world— where oppression, marginalization and vulnerability have determined the social landscape since the times of the Conquest. The movement focuses on the “dialogue between the Christian tradition, social theory, and the insight of the poor into their own situation, leading to action for change.”(1)  Liberation theology underlines the political potential of the church’s mission and denounces instances when the church has been complicit with regimes of imperial and oppressive power.

Set in Portugal, DEUS POBRE, which translates as Impoverished God, revisits this particular history by asking contemporary priests to deliver, during their daily mass or for a public audience, theological-political sermons originally written byBartolomé de las Casas (1542), António Vieira (1653-57), Gustavo Gutiérrez(1971), Óscar Romero (1977-80),and Leonardo Boff (1996). Thus the priests engage with Portugal’s colonial history and the past role of the church in missionary evangelization, as well as with its current institutional role in a globalized and socially unequal world where the majority of its population lives in abject poverty.

More info here

Exhibition and Book Launch | The Future Lasts Forever, Gävle Konstcentrum, Sweden

November 24, 2011

November 19, 2011— March 4, 2012

Opening reception: November 19, 3 pm 
Presentation of the project by Carlos Motta and Runo Lagomarsino
Lecture by Miguel López, Red Conceptualismos del Sur
Moderator: Lisa Rosendahl, Director, Iaspis

Group Exhibition | The Walls That Divide Us, apexart, New York

November 1, 2011

November 9 — December 22, 2011

Opening reception: Wed., November 9, 6-8 pm 

Featuring work by: Gisele Amantea, Kader Attia, Carolina Caycedo, Chen Chieh-jen, Sam Durant, Leor Grady, Ivan Grubanov, Shilpa Gupta, Alfredo Jaar, Emily Jacir, Runo Lagomarsino, Teresa Margolles, Locky Morris, Carlos Motta, Ahmet Ögüt, Anna Ostoya, Amalia Pica, Rigo 23. Curated by Miguel Amado.

In the early 1990s, Western-style liberal democracies appeared as the archetypal form of government from which a peacekeeping transnational power would emerge. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the end of the Cold War inaugurated what one hoped was an era without conflict. However, on the fiftieth anniversary of that fortification, strife is spreading worldwide. From the U.S.-Mexico frontier to Jerusalem, more and more barbed wired fences and checkpoints are being assembled, splitting communities and creating areas of exclusion. The construction of the Berlin Wall, rather than its demise, is the historical moment that encapsulates the current state of affairs. The organizing principle of present times is not the free circulation of individuals but the walls that divide them.

The Walls That Divide Us addresses the proliferation of state and city separation barriers across the globe as symbols of dissent in contemporary politics. Featured artists examine the ideology of wall building as a means of segregating populations to establish sovereignty in uneven geographies. The works in the show draw attention to the material, normative, and cultural function of barricading in zones of conflict today and the social injustice that it generates. They comment on the establishment of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the Israeli-Palestinian question, the violence in Ciudad Juárez, and the migration crisis in the Mediterranean region. They also explore phenomena such as imperialistic enterprises and contested territories, security policies and border control, revolutionary movement and mass protest.

More info here

Group Exhibition and Book Launch | The Air We Breathe at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

October 15, 2011

November 5 -February 20, 2011

Over the last decade, equal rights for same-sex couples — including the right to legally wed — has proven one of the country’s most pressing civil rights issues. In the belief that art can lead to new ways of thinking and open up dialogue, The Air We Breathe brings together thirty visual artists and eight poets who offer their commitment and creativity to the cause of marriage equality. The show and its accompanying book — both titled after a phrase from a Langston Hughes poem, “Equality is in the air we breathe” — aim to prompt public discussion and foster ever broader understanding of a crucial issue of our time.

Visual artists in the exhibition include Laylah Ali, D-L Alvarez, Doug Ashford, Nayland Blake, Jennifer Bornstein, Andrea Bowers, Robert Buck, Johanna Calle, Martha Colburn, Sam Durant, Shannon Ebner, Nicole Eisenman, Simon Fujiwara, Liam Gillick, Robert Gober, Ann Hamilton, Sharon Hayes, Christian Holstad, Elliott Hundley, Colter Jacobsen, Matt Keegan, Carlos Motta, Catherine Opie, Nicolás Paris, Dan Perjovschi, Raymond Pettibon, Amy Sillman, Allison Smith, Lily van der Stokker, and Erika Vogt. Poets include George Albon, Will Alexander, John Ashbery, Dodie Bellamy, kari edwards (poem selected by Frances Blau and Rob Halpern), Kevin Killian, Ariana Reines, and Anne Waldman.

New York City book launch
Saturday, November 5, 6-7:30pm
White Columns
320 West 13th Street

More info here

Performa Project | “Broken English” in collaboration with Julieta Aranda for Performa 11, New York

October 14, 2011

November 1-21, 2011

For Performa 11, Julieta Aranda and Carlos Motta (b. 1975, Mexico City, Mexico; b. 1978 Bogota, Colombia) have invited a group of international contributors to reflect on New York City as a cross-cultural terrain and as a public space for constant cultural translations and negotiations, in a publication/supplement titled Broken English. Working with the curatorial threads of Performa 11, the supplement will act as a witness of New York’s cultural history and will present writings by artists and cultural producers that have been active in different capacities for the past 30 years, including:

Julieta Aranda, Joey Arias/Carlos Motta, Defne Ayas, Michael Baers, Sarnath Banerjee, Andy Bichlbaum, Julio Camba, Asli Çavuşoğlu, Carolina Caycedo, Samuel R. Delany, Jimmie Durham, Liam Gillick, Ashley Hunt, Adam Kleinman, Runo Lagomarsino, Yates McKee, Naeem Mohaiemen/Visible Collective, Shirin Neshat/RoseLee Goldberg, OWS Architecture Committee, Raqs Media Collective, Martha Rosler, Kim Turcot DiFruscia/Elizabeth Povinelli, Anton Vidokle/Andrei Monastyrski, Jeff Weintraub, and Carla Zaccagnini. 

Treating New York City as site for all sorts of personal and collective encounters/misses/near-misses, the supplement promises to be a fertile ground for a discussion of issues of urbanism, architecture, cultural policy, art production, the role of underground etc. (The publication will focus on the suspension of individual and group ideologies, cultural behaviors, moral attitudes, lifestyles, and beliefs when faced with other people and communities in the urban environment). For the design of the supplement, Aranda and Motta will draw from Constructivist and propaganda aesthetics, featuring both new commissioned texts as well as reprints of historical texts. A public launch is scheduled for November 12. A Performa Project. Curated by Defne Ayas.

Aranda and Motta’s collaboration started with Arts & Leisure, a one-time tabloid newspaper commissioned by Art in General and co-published with e-flux in 2005. The tabloid drew its title from the New York Time’s cultural section making emphasis on its equivalence of arts and/to leisure. Using a journalistic style to inquire about the crisis pertaining art criticism and complacency with commercial structures of art discussion, the project presented poignant texts, articles, texts and humorous contributions (cross word puzzles, horoscope, letters to the editor, etc.) by over 20 international cultural producers.

Screening and Talk | A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective at Museum of Art and Design, New York

October 13, 2011

Saturday, October 22, 2011. 5 pm

To highlight the issues faced by queer immigrants in the United States, the grassroots organization QUEEROCRACY in collaboration with artist Carlos Motta present A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective. The event will feature presentations by leading queer immigration activists, a public conversation, and a video screening of a social intervention-based performance held by QUEEROCRACY and its allies on Columbus Day at Columbus Circle. 

A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective attempts to bring attention to the way immigrant and queer politics intersect in the public sphere in ways that both confront, challenge and transform the state mechanisms that police borders and bodies in the United States. This dialogue strives to generate new ideas on how to better make a difference in the lives of queer people around the world.

Presentations and a public conversation by Felipe Baeza, New York State Youth Leadership Council; Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Staff Attorney, Lambda Legal; Camilo Godoy, QUEEROCRACY; Jackie Vimo, activist and PhD Candidate in Politics The New School for Social Research; and a video address by Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International. Moderated by Carlos Motta, artist.

More info here

Group Exhibition | The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M Hunt Collection at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

October 1, 2011

October 1- February 19, 2011

Earlier this year The New Yorker referred to the collector as “the legendary W.M. Hunt.” He is a renowned curator and dealer who has been collecting photographs for 40 years. A self-described “champion of photography,” he is well-known for his “eye” and sense of humor. Hunt describes the collection as “magical, heart-stopping images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen.”

The photographs of The Unseen Eye have a common theme — the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured, or the eyes firmly closed. The images evoke a wide range of emotions and are characterized, by what, at first glance, the subject conceals rather than what the camera reveals.

More info here