Erica Bohm: Mundos Alternos
Jun 8, 2017
UCR ARTSblock
EXHIBITION DATES: September 16, 2017–February 3, 2018
RECEPTION: Saturday, September 30, 2017, 6–8pm
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – UCR ARTSblock announces the participating artists in
Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas. The exhibition,
which is part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, brings together
works by over thirty contemporary artists and collectives from across the
Americas who use science fiction to imagine new realities and alternate
worlds.
“Mundos Alternos will present works by over thirty artists that together provocatively address issues of identity, nationhood, and transnational politics,” said Sheila Bergman, Executive Director of ARTSblock. “This selection includes seminal artists such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña, best known for his collaborative performance work, as well as emerging voices, such as the internet artist Jillian Mayer.”
“Our extensive research included eighteen months of travel throughout the
United States, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. We
visited more than 400 artists, curators, and scholars to ultimately choose
these 31 Chicano, Latino, and Latin American artists and groups,” said Tyler
Stallings, Artistic Director of the Culver Center of the Arts and co-curator of
the exhibition.
“Among all the artists whose practices we learned about during our research,
we could have curated any number of versions of this exhibition,” added
Joanna Szupinska-Myers, CMP Curator of Exhibitions and co-curator of the
exhibition. The exhibition in its final form, the curators explain, will show
science fiction as a genre that allows artists to imagine new realities, both
utopic and dystopic, within hemispheric exchanges throughout the Americas.
“Among other things, science fiction captures an impulse in visual art,
performance, and even costume design galvanizing artists to shape shift and
alter the relations of power through cosmic existences. These personae
illuminate other structures of reality and exteriorize ways of feeling alien in
the face of rigid definitions of American citizenship,” explained Robb
Hernández, Assistant Professor of English at UCR and co-curator of the
exhibition.
“Mundos Alternos is the first effort of transnational scope to identify the
growing tendency of science fiction in contemporary Latin American and
Latino art, a tendency that recasts ‘the future’ at a time when debates over
immigration reform, militarized borders, and building ‘the wall’ might suggest
otherwise,” he added.
The exhibition will feature works in all genres, including significant
installations by Tania Candiani, Beatriz Cortez, Chico MacMurtrie, Rubén
Ortiz Torres, Rigo 23, and Simón Vega, and a new performance by Guillermo
Gómez-Peña.
The exhibition will encompass the 8,000 square feet that comprise the
changing exhibition galleries at ARTSblock’s three venues: the California
Museum of Photography (CMP), Culver Center of the Arts, and Sweeney Art
Gallery. A heavily illustrated, 160-page book will accompany the exhibition,
and will include original essays by the curators as well as leading science
fiction scholars. Mundos Alternos is curated by Robb Hernández, Assistant
Professor of English at UCR; Tyler Stallings, Artistic Director of the Culver
Center of the Arts; and Joanna Szupinska-Myers, CMP Curator of
Exhibitions. Kathryn Poindexter, CMP Curatorial Assistant, is Project
Coordinator. Sherryl Vint, Director of the Speculative Fiction and Cultures of
Science program at UCR, curates an accompanying film program. Major
support for this exhibition and publication is provided through grants from
the Getty Foundation.
Mundos Alternos is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Southern California. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Erica Bohm (b. 1976, Buenos Aires, Argentina) graduated from the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón in 2001. She went on to study photography with Gabriel Valansi and joined the Postgraduate Artists program and Film Laboratory at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Bohm participated in Antarctica Art Residence, Antarctica, Argentina (2015), and Mapping Exchange: Artists Residency Programs, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (2009). She has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Mission, Houston and Chicago; Baró Galeria, São Paulo; and Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario, Argentina. Bohm’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá, Colombia; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Mar del Plata, Argentina; Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires; Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires; Creative Research Lab, Austin; Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Buenos Aires; Nora Fisch Gallery, Buenos Aires; and Instituto Cervantes de São Paulo, among others.
EXHIBITION DATES: September 16, 2017–February 3, 2018
RECEPTION: Saturday, September 30, 2017, 6–8pm
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – UCR ARTSblock announces the participating artists in
Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas. The exhibition,
which is part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, brings together
works by over thirty contemporary artists and collectives from across the
Americas who use science fiction to imagine new realities and alternate
worlds.
“Mundos Alternos will present works by over thirty artists that together provocatively address issues of identity, nationhood, and transnational politics,” said Sheila Bergman, Executive Director of ARTSblock. “This selection includes seminal artists such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña, best known for his collaborative performance work, as well as emerging voices, such as the internet artist Jillian Mayer.”
“Our extensive research included eighteen months of travel throughout the
United States, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. We
visited more than 400 artists, curators, and scholars to ultimately choose
these 31 Chicano, Latino, and Latin American artists and groups,” said Tyler
Stallings, Artistic Director of the Culver Center of the Arts and co-curator of
the exhibition.
“Among all the artists whose practices we learned about during our research,
we could have curated any number of versions of this exhibition,” added
Joanna Szupinska-Myers, CMP Curator of Exhibitions and co-curator of the
exhibition. The exhibition in its final form, the curators explain, will show
science fiction as a genre that allows artists to imagine new realities, both
utopic and dystopic, within hemispheric exchanges throughout the Americas.
“Among other things, science fiction captures an impulse in visual art,
performance, and even costume design galvanizing artists to shape shift and
alter the relations of power through cosmic existences. These personae
illuminate other structures of reality and exteriorize ways of feeling alien in
the face of rigid definitions of American citizenship,” explained Robb
Hernández, Assistant Professor of English at UCR and co-curator of the
exhibition.
“Mundos Alternos is the first effort of transnational scope to identify the
growing tendency of science fiction in contemporary Latin American and
Latino art, a tendency that recasts ‘the future’ at a time when debates over
immigration reform, militarized borders, and building ‘the wall’ might suggest
otherwise,” he added.
The exhibition will feature works in all genres, including significant
installations by Tania Candiani, Beatriz Cortez, Chico MacMurtrie, Rubén
Ortiz Torres, Rigo 23, and Simón Vega, and a new performance by Guillermo
Gómez-Peña.
The exhibition will encompass the 8,000 square feet that comprise the
changing exhibition galleries at ARTSblock’s three venues: the California
Museum of Photography (CMP), Culver Center of the Arts, and Sweeney Art
Gallery. A heavily illustrated, 160-page book will accompany the exhibition,
and will include original essays by the curators as well as leading science
fiction scholars. Mundos Alternos is curated by Robb Hernández, Assistant
Professor of English at UCR; Tyler Stallings, Artistic Director of the Culver
Center of the Arts; and Joanna Szupinska-Myers, CMP Curator of
Exhibitions. Kathryn Poindexter, CMP Curatorial Assistant, is Project
Coordinator. Sherryl Vint, Director of the Speculative Fiction and Cultures of
Science program at UCR, curates an accompanying film program. Major
support for this exhibition and publication is provided through grants from
the Getty Foundation.
Mundos Alternos is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Southern California. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Erica Bohm (b. 1976, Buenos Aires, Argentina) graduated from the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón in 2001. She went on to study photography with Gabriel Valansi and joined the Postgraduate Artists program and Film Laboratory at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Bohm participated in Antarctica Art Residence, Antarctica, Argentina (2015), and Mapping Exchange: Artists Residency Programs, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (2009). She has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Mission, Houston and Chicago; Baró Galeria, São Paulo; and Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario, Argentina. Bohm’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá, Colombia; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Mar del Plata, Argentina; Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires; Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires; Creative Research Lab, Austin; Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Buenos Aires; Nora Fisch Gallery, Buenos Aires; and Instituto Cervantes de São Paulo, among others.