Ayataki

Claudia Martínez Garay

In Residence: Jan 24 – Mar 21, 2022

Exhibition: Mar 17 – May 8, 2022


Claudia Martínez Garay explores a new medium in her Artpace exhibition Ayataki. This is the first surround sound work by the artist and only the second animated video she has ever created. Playing throughout the gallery is a collage of original music written by the artist, alongside found audio samples including traditional songs from the Peruvian Andes and radio transmissions from San Antonio. There is also occasional dialogue spoken in Spanish and Quechua.

The screens placed in the center of the room feature the animation created by the artist. It depicts a narrative weaving the socio-political history of Peru during the civil war of the 1980s with the universal story of families migrating from the countryside to urban environments. The constructed landscape seen in this 15-minute animation makes visual references to both these experiences, with the radio tower serving as an anchor. Radio towers were often targeted during the war to limit communications through the country and are now seen as a symbol of that era. Martínez Garay seeks to create an atmospheric installation through a minimal aesthetic paired with a unique sonic experience.

Artist

Claudia Martínez Garay

Lima, Perú / Amsterdam, Netherlands

Claudia Martínez Garay is an artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, print media, video, and installation. Her work deals with the sociopolitical memory and history of Perú. Through her work, she seeks to challenge the persistence of the colonialist frameworks by reviewing (un-)official narratives. She seeks to understand Andean cultures and brown bodies through remnants such as oral, visual, and material culture and archives that are continually looted and kept abroad. In 2016–2017, she did the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten residency program in Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include: Caminos de Liberación, GRIMM, Amsterdam, 2021; Ten Thousand Things, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, 2020; A las revoluciones, como a los árboles, se les reconoce por sus frutos, GRIMM, Amsterdam, 2019; ¡Kachkaniraqkun! / ¡Somos aún! / ¡We are, still!, Nova Section, Art Basel Miami, 2018; I WILL OUTLIVE YOU, GRIMM, New York, 2018, among others.

Her work has been presented at: SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021; Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 2020; El Museo del Barrio, New York; 21a Bienal de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil, Sao Paulo, 2019; Museum Albertinum, Dresden, 2020; El Museo del Barrio, New York, 2019; 16th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2019; 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, 2019; Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, 2019; Qorikancha, Cuzco, 2019; 12th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, 2018; New Museum Triennial, New York, 2018. 4ta Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2015; 12 Bienal Internacional de Cuenca,2014; among others. She has received the Stokroos Prize, Netherlands, 2021; LOOP Acquisition Award at LOOP Barcelona, 2019 and CIFO Commission grant, Miami, 2018. She lives and works in Amsterdam and Lima.

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Curator

Marcela Guerrero

Marcela Guerrero is Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recently, she was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945. In summer 2018, Guerrero curated the exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture. From 2014 to 2017, she worked as Curatorial Fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the much-lauded exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Along with Fajardo-Hill, Guerrero curated the show’s selection of Latina and Chicana artists and wrote the catalogue chapter on Caribbean women artists, along with more than sixty biographical entries. Prior to her position at the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino Art Curatorial department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) where she served as Research Coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). As researcher-in-house, she was in charge of reviewing, vetting, and publishing all primary and secondary sources on the ICAA’s digital archive “Documents of 20th -Century Latin American and Latino Art.” At the MFAH she also participated in the acquisition of artworks from the Caribbean region for the permanent collection. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in a variety of publications including ArtNexus, Diálogo, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Caribbean Intransit, and Gulf Coast, and has contributed articles to a variety of exhibition catalogues. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero received her BA from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, and holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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