In recent years Guatemalan artistic production has been extremely powerful, with an emergence of both critical and whimsical artistic practices responding to the violence, repression and historical memory of the previous decades in Guatemala, but also its unique sense of contemporaneity, indigeneity and radical urban imagination. Contemporary Guatemalan artists such as Regina José Galindo, Benvenuto Chavajay, Jorge de León and many others are recognized widely not only in the context of Central/Latin America, but receive much acclaim on the world stage, while contemporary urban art spaces like NuMu and Proyectos Ultravioleta are notable for their inventive curatorial practices and creative public engagement.

This unique event showcases the exciting energy around contemporary artistic and curatorial practices emerging in Guatemala today. It features artists including Jessica Kairé, Terike Haapoja, and Jaime Permuth, who will present recent projects conducted in Guatemala; curators Anabella Acevedo and Pablo José Ramírez (joining remotely from Guatemala); and Prof. Nitin Sawhney from The New School Media Studies program. Sawhney, Acevedo and Ramirez are co-organizing the exhibition initiative Guatemala Después  which will open this April (on view April 9-29) at The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons/The New School and at Ciudad de la Imaginación in Guatemala this June, featuring the work of over 40 Guatemalan and US-based artists.

Please see the recently launched Kickstarter Campaign for Guatemala Después to learn more and contribute to this exciting new project.

The conversation will be moderated by María Del Carmen Carrión, ICI’s Director of Public Programs & Research, followed by an informal mixer with Guatemalan food and drinks, and a performance by Guatemalan musician Isabel Ruano.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Independent Curators International (ICI) and Ciudad de la Imaginación as well as The School of Media Studies, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC), and Vera List Center for Art and Politics; it is co-sponsored by the University Student Senate (USS) at The New School.

SPEAKER BIOS:

TERIKE HAAPOJA

Terike Haapoja is a Finnish visual artist. With a specific focus in encounters with nature, death and other species, Haapoja’s work investigates the existential and political boundaries of our world. Haapoja’s work raises questions about the existential basis radical otherness provide for being, and about how different structures of exclusion and discrimination function as foundations for identity and culture. Haapoja approaches the previously mentioned themes by building up large projects, often realized in the forms of installations, related publications and participatory acts. Haapoja contributes regularly to Finnish and international art publications. She was the editor of mustekala.info issue ”After the Animal” (2013), co-editor of special issue ”Animal” of Esitys-journal (2013) and co-editor of the Finnish Bioart Society’s publication Field_Notes: From Landscape to Laboratory (2013). Haapoja represented Finland in the Venice Biennale in 2013 with a solo show in the Nordic Pavilion.

JESSICA KAIRE

Jessica Kairé is a Guatemalan multi-disciplinary artist and educator living in Brooklyn, New York. She is also the co-founder and co-director of Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporáneo-NuMu-Guatemala.

JAIME PERMUTH

Jaime Permuth is a Guatemalan photographer living and working in New York City. In 2014, he was awarded with a Smithsonian Institution Artist Fellowship and was also nominated for a 2014 USA Artists Fellowship. In 2013, his first monograph Yonkeroswas published by La Fabrica Editorial (Madrid). Also, in 2013 he was nominated for the Prix Pictet and awarded an NFA Fellowship from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. His photographs have been shown at several venues in New York, NY, including: The Museum of Modern Art, The Queens Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Museum of the City of New York, The Jewish Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. He has also exhibited internationally at the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in Guatemala, Ryugaheon Gallery (Korea) Casa del Lago in Mexico City, and the Israeli Parliament. Permuth is a Faculty Member at the School of Visual Arts, where he teaches in the Master of Professional Studies in Digital Photography program curating and hosting their i3 Lecture Series.

ANABELLA ACEVEDO

Anabella Acevedo is Executive Director of Ciudad de la Imaginación. She is an independent academic; she has resided and worked in Quetzaltenango since 2005. She holds an undergraduate degree in Literature and Philosophy from the Rafael Landívar University. She obtained her Master’s in Latin American Literature in 1989 and a doctorate in Latin American Literature from the University of Georgia in 1994. She was the Director of the Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program in Guatemala, form 2001 to 2013, when she worked at the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA). She has co-curated several exhibits, such as Estados de Excepción (States of Exception) in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. In 2001 she was the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation research grant for the project “Marginalidades, transgresiones y negociaciones. La violencia en Guatemala a través de las prácticas culturales de los jóvenes.” Acevedo curated the XVII and XIX Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala (2012 & 2014). In 2013 she formed part of a research team for the “The curvature of time, Art and Women.” She has published several essays about literature and Guatemalan Art.

PABLO JOSÉ RAMÍREZ

Pablo José Ramírez is a curator, political theorist and art writer based in Guatemala. He is the founder and director of the Contemporary Art & Political Theory Simposium,Absurdo. Between 2011 and 2014 he was the Executive Director and Curator at Ciudad de la Imaginación and continues to work there as the Associate Curator. He was co-curator of the XIX Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala. He has received several grants including The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros 2012 CIMAM Travel grant. He is co-founder and member of the editorial comittee of Gimnasia, an online site for critical theory of arts and culture in Central America. His most recent curatorial projects are: Estados de Excepción (States of Exception) in Guatemala and Ecuador and La caricia vulgar de la caida (The vulgar caress of the fall) at the Spanish Cultural Center of Guatemala. He is currently co-curating Guatemala Despuesa project produced by the New School in New York and is also curating an exhibition with Remco De Blaaij that will open at CCA Glasgow in November 2014.

NITIN SAWHNEY

Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the New School. His research, teaching and creative practice engages the critical role of technology, civic media, and artistic interventions in contested spaces. Nitin previously taught at the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) and conducted research at the MIT Media Lab. He examines social movements and crisis contexts, though forms of creative urban tactics, participatory research, performance and documentary film. He is the co-curator of the Guatemala Después exhibitions to be held in New York and Guatemala in 2015. He previously co-curated the participatory exhibition #SearchUnderOccupy at the New School to showcase creative responses to the Occupy Movement in New York City in 2012. Nitin is currently completing a documentary film, Zona Intervenida, focusing on genocide, memory and body through site-specific performance interventions and documentary film in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.