Welcome to LATINA’s Art Digest, a periodical collection of new events, expos, and happenings in the art world. From rising Latinx artists, curators, and exhibitions, we highlight the must-see art events happening at the moment.
At the end of each summer, aside from New York Fashion Week, New York City buzzes to the tune of world-famous art fairs and exciting new exhibitions. At Abrons Arts Center, curator Mellány Sánchez pays homage to mid 20th century fashion workers, and identifies a through line between their work and today’s leading fashion designers. Meanwhile at Kurimanzutto, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane showcases campy garments and “wearable sculptures” that question the fashion industry’s practices and gender binaries. Other artists and exhibitions contend with memory, such as Muriel Hasbun’s haunting experimental photography and Martín La Roche’s participatory audience exercises.
“The Endless Coup”
Carlos Gallardo, Abatido/ A La Carne De Chile, 1981.
On view at New Art Dealers Alliance from September 5, 2023 to September 30, 2023.
“The Endless Coup” is a group show featuring 21 artists of Chilean background taking place at the New Art Dealers Alliance. The exhibition showcases works that contend with the impact of the Chilean coup d’état on September 11, 1973 and Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Floria González: “Mixtape”
Floria Gonzales, Thanks for the Dance, Leonard Cohen, 2023. Oil paint on canvas, 7 9/10 x 7 9/10 in.
On view at JO-HS New York Gallery from September 5, 2023 to October 5, 2023.
For her solo presentation, “MIXTAPE,” the Mexico-city based artist Floria Gonzalez translates music into visual form. Gonzales looks back at the time in her life when she would wait hours for the radio DJ to play her favorite song to record it on tape. Her ensuing work reads like a playlist: Home with You, FKA Twigs; Sound and Vision, David Bowie. Each of the artist’s song-inspired paintings are a nostalgic entry into a parallel universe. Power ballads and dreamy electronic songs turn to eerie dreamscapes. In Thanks for the Dance, Leonard Cohen, loose, thick brushstrokes depict a house caving in amid a gray and somber landscape. It captures the melancholy of Cohen’s raspy voice, and larger contemplation of the fluid nature of love and lust. The exhibition is a vulnerable exploration of music enmeshed in memories.
“Objects of Permanence”
Center for Puerto Rican Studies Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY
On view at Abrons Art Center from September 6, 2023 to September 14, 2023.
During New York Fashion Week, “Objects of Permanence” amplifies the foundational contributions of Puerto Rican women and other Latina/Caribbean communities of the mid 20th century in New York’s fashion industry. This multimedia exhibition bridges their legacy with today’s leading fashion designers, featuring objects by the likes of Tremaine Emory and Willy Chavarria. This is a tribute to the hands that built and dressed New York City.
The Armory Show
Jean-Pierre Villafañe, Stroll, 2023. Oil on Linen, 72 x 48 inches.
On view at the Javits Center from September 8, 2023 to September 10, 2023.
The Armory Show — one of the most highly anticipated art fairs — returns to New York City. This year’s roster brings galleries from across the country, including the Latin American cities São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogota, and San Juan. We are particularly excited to see Embajada’s presentation of Jean Pierre Villafañe’s carnivalesque paintings and Catherine Clark Gallery’s booth featuring Arleene Correa Valencia’s faceless depictions of migration on textiles.
Mildred Beltré: “Allow Me to Gather Myself”
Mildred Beltré, Shine, Walnut ink and color pencil on paper, 22 x 30 in.
On view at The Latinx Project from September 8, 2023 to December 7, 2023.
“Allow Me to Gather Myself” features work by The Latinx Project Artist-in-Residence Mildred Beltré. In this solo exhibition, Beltré explores “the power and limits of language.” The artist has a wide ranging practice working across abstraction, textiles, and even creating her own walnut-based ink to develop a “counter archive” of Afro-diasporic ways of knowing. The public is invited to RSVP for the opening reception.
Dolores Furtado: “Vestigio”
Dolores Furtado, Lover, blown glass, 18x13x8 inches, 2022.
On view PROXYCO Gallery opening on September 8, 2023.
Dolores Furtado experiments with glass and paper pulp sculptures in her solo show, “Vestigio.” She is interested in collapsing time and space in her work. Her glass sculptures are simultaneously pristine and timeworn, futuristic and ancient. Furtado’s sculptures, characterized by their rough exterior and amorphous shaping, defy expectations of what glass objects can be.
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: “New Lexicons for Embodiment”
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Look 3, 2023. Belts, rivets, polyester and metal, 82.68 x 55.12 x 19.69 in. Courtesy of Kurimanzutto.
On view at Kurimanzutto New York from September 14, 2023 to October 21, 2023
Bárbara Sánchez-Kane works at the intersection of fashion and art. In “New Lexicons for Embodiment,” the fashion designer and artist showcases ready-to-wear garments from her eponymous label, and new “wearable sculptures,” through which Kane can articulate social issues within the fashion industry.
Paulo Monteiro: “Undefined Inclusions”
Paulo Monteiro, Untitled/Sem título, 2023 © Paulo Monteiro, courtesy Mendes Wood DM and Pace Gallery
On view at Pace Gallery from September 15, 2023 to October 28, 2023
In “Undefined Inclusions,” Paulo Monteiro explores the limits of shapes in 50 separate artworks. His vivid oil paintings on linen and sculptural works are all about form and perception. As seen in his piece Untitled/ Sem título, the oval motif repeats across sculptures and paintings as a passageway for new colors, tones and shapes. See this exhibition for a mesmerizing journey into abstraction and bright colorways.
Pepón Osorio: “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón latiente”
Installation view, Pepón Osorio: “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón latiente”. Badge of Honor (1995), New Museum, 2023.
On view at the New Museum through September 17, 2023.
For over thirty years, Pepón Osorio has upended traditional notions of art-making via his richly ornate installations. “My Beating Heart / Mi corazón latiente” is Osorio’s most comprehensive exhibition to date. It includes five large-scale installations inspired by everyday environments, from home interiors to barbershops and classrooms. These include Badge of Honor (1995), a recreation of a teenage boy’s room adjacent to a cell block. The artwork slowly reveals itself to be an intimate conversation between a teenager and his imprisoned father. Vignettes of everyday life overpower the museum walls and ultimately question how we might take better care of one another.
Martín La Roche: “Yo también me acuerdo”
Installation view, Martín La Roche: “Yo también me acuerdo”, Miriam Gallery, 2023
On view at Miriam Gallery from September 21, 2023 to November 18, 2023.
“Yo tambien me acuerdo (I do remember)” is a site-specific participatory installation that encourages visitors to touch the art, and most importantly, to remember and forge new narratives. Via a series of prompts embedded in the exhibition, artist Martín La Roche activates the gallery into a space for collective healing and renaming. The artist is scheduled to lead a series of creative, tactile, and group exercises throughout the run of the exhibition.
Muriel Hasbun: “Tracing Terruño”
Muriel Hasbun, Todos los santos (Volcán de Izalco, amén) / All the Saints (Izalco Volcano, Amen), from Santos y sombras (Saints and Shadows), Gelatin silver print,
1995–96. © Muriel Hasbun
On view at the International Center for Photography from September 29, 2023 to January 8, 2024.
Multidisciplinary artist and educator Muriel Hasbun superimposes X-ray scans, expired film, and archival family documents to foreground overlapping ideas of home, geography and borders. “Tracing Terruño” illustrates the way migration, war and genocide are forever imprinted on terruño (land). Hasbun, a descendant of Salvadoran and Palestinian Christians on her paternal side, and Polish and French Jews on her maternal side, grounds the exhibition in the personal. Her experience migrating from El Salvador during the civil war in 1979, and her mixed heritage pulsate across her work. In “Tracing Terruño,” Muriel Hasbun tells the story of one family’s experience with dislocation via nearly 80 experimental works. Through photography, video and installation, the artist embarks on a quest of remembering.
Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton: “Q’iwanakaxa/Q’iwsanakaxa Utjxiwa” (Cacique apoderado Francisco Tancara & Rosa Quiñones confronted by the subprefecto, chief of police, corregidor, archbishop, Reid Shepard, & Adventist missionaries)
Installation view of Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton: “Q’iwanakaxa/Q’iwsanakaxa Utjxiwa (Cacique apoderado Francisco Tancara & Rosa Quiñones confronted by the subprefecto, chief of police, corregidor, archbishop, Reid Shepard, & Adventist missionaries)”. Photo: Steven Paneccasio
On view at MOMA PS1 until October 2, 2023.
Siblings Chuquimamani-Condori (Elysia Crampton Chuquimia) and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton honor their great-great-grandparents who worked towards asserting the Aymara people’s land and religious rights in Bolivia. In collaboration with family, the siblings resume their ancestors’ legacy by bringing Indigenous Aymara cosmologies to MOMA PS1. The immersive exhibition consists of a mural accompanied by sound and music.
Manuel Aja Espil: “Worlds of Exile”
Manuel Aja Espil, Invasion of Wilkes Land, 2023, Oil on linen, 56 3/4 x 72 1/2 in.
On view at Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary through October 14, 2023.
Manuel Aja Espil proposes a new visual vocabulary for dystopian fables. Aja Espil draws from sci-fi, cartoons and Charles Dickens to create imaginary universes full of sarcasm and spectacle. “Worlds of Exile,” Aja Espil’s first solo exhibition in the U.S., features new paintings that fuse European romantic landscapes with fantastical subjects. His gaze on society and nature may just imagine a world without the direct presence of human beings.
Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo): “Nothing New”
Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Found image: “nude woman behind opaque glass,” 2023. Photo: Erik Von Weber, licensed via Getty Images
On view at the New Museum from October 12, 2023 to January 14, 2024
In “Nothing New,” artist Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, better known as Puppies Puppies, will blend art and life together as she transforms the New Museum’s lobby into a stage for her daily activities. Mediated through a fogged glass, viewers will have a cloudy view of the artist as she re-contextualizes quotidian life into a performance. In sensationalizing her daily existence, Kuriki-Olivo embraces the nuanced layers of her own identity, rejecting tokenization and reductive narratives of racial and trans identities.
Joanna García Cherán is an art historian, writer and cultural worker passionate about art of our time.
