SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Artpace announced the opening of new exhibitions by the Summer International Artists-in-Residence. Francis Almendárez (Houston, TX), Juana Córdova (Cuenca, Ecuador), and Narcissister (New York City, NY) began their residencies at Artpace on May 28. Now that their eight-week residency has concluded, each artist revealed exhibitions of the work created at Artpace.
Working from materials such as used clothing, tumbleweeds, and bailed aluminum, the artists’ exhibitions explore the natural world, ethnography, trauma, memory, and the troubling divide between popular entertainment and the experimental art world.
The exhibitions on view are:
• Francis Almendárez, rhythm and (p)leisure
• Juana Córdova, Chronicles of Uprooting
• Narcissister, Wimmin
At the conclusion of the exhibition, all work will be returned to the resident artists. Much of the work produced through Artpace residencies goes on to be shown around the world or sold into public or private collections. Artpace is free and open to the public seven days a week.
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky is the guest curator for the Sumer 2019 International Artist-in-Residence Program. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in photography, video and performance. Her work has been exhibited internationally in group and solo exhibitions. In 2015 she was awarded a Fulbright grant and a Jerome Foundation Grant to produce “The Perilous Journey of María Palacios”, a performance-based film that premiered in the 2016 Cuenca Biennale curated by Dan Cameron. In 2010 she participated in There is always a cup of sea for man to sail, the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), where she exhibited work from her project, Memories of Development.
Skvirsky is an Associate Professor of art at Lafayette College, Easton, PA and an MFA faculty member at The New School, Parsons School of Design, NY, NY. She is represented by Ponce + Robles Gallery in Spain.
Francis Almendárez Yis an interdisciplinary artist who traverses the intersections of history, ethnography and the arts, using them as tools to address memory and trauma, specifically of migrant and queer bodies of Central American and Caribbean diasporas, in attempt to make sense of and re-construct identity. Being the product of a family of intergenerational migrants and having to frequently re-locate due to financial instability, he attempts to transform spatiotemporal dislocation and intersectionality into agency, resistance and autonomy by vocalizing and embodying the experiences of the marginalized, disenfranchised, or liminal Other. His work, ranging from video installation to performance and text, incorporates music and storytelling, and brings to the foreground time, labor and rhythm. Combining personal narratives with those of his grandmother, Almendárez uses the biographical to collapse and juxtapose past, present and future, subtly touching upon underlying, overlapping and recurring themes from postcolonialism to migrant labor to gender roles and motherhood. Working from the vantage point of both insider and outsider, he observes, he listens, and he collects. Then, he transforms the material from the personal to the political – and finally – to the poetic, in the effort to re-present and re-historicize alterity, and provide an alternative to the dominant Western narrative.o
Juana Córdova was born in Cuenca, Ecuador in 1973, where she studied and obtained her bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts. She was elected as Ecuador’s representative at the VIII Cuenca Biennial (2004) and has had several solo exhibitions Las Manos en la Masa (2006) at Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca at El Comercio Foundation. One of her most recent exhibitions A la Orilla (2016), shown at the Municipal Museum of Modern Art of Cuenca, exhibited a panoramic view of her work.
During her twenty-year career, the places she has lived have influenced the topics she approaches. From the city or the countryside, her work explores the role of the individual in contemporary society and its relationship with nature. Her installations and objects express her deep concern for the environment.
Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Masked and merkin-ed, she works at the intersection of dance, art, and activism in a range of media including film, video art, and experimental music. She has presented work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums, and galleries. She won “Best Use of a Sex Toy” at The Good Vibrations Erotic Film Festival, a Bessie Award nomination for the theatrical performance of Organ Player, Creative Capital and United States Artists Awards, and interested in troubling the popular entertainment and experimental art divide, she appeared on America’s Got Talent. Her first feature film Narcissister Organ Player premiered at Sundance and SXSW Film Festivals 2018 and she recently completed the Sundance Theatre Lab for the creation of a new theatrical work with playwright Branden Jacobs Jenkins.
