2023 NYLAAT AT GOVERNORS ISLAND

Monumento, group show
NYLAAT Curatorial Residency, Building 405-B, Colonels Row, Governors Island
Organized by Dulcina Abreu, Curator in Residence, and Ezequiel Taveras, Curator in Chief of NYLAAT
July 21 – August 27, 2023

Photos by Luis Corzo

Participating artists: Elia Alba, Miguel Braceli, Fabiola Burgos Labra, Lucas Cordeiro, Luis Corzo, Paola De la Calle, Patricia Encarnacion, Ignacio Gatica, Felipe Mujica, Maria Elena Pombo, Jezenia Romero, and Coral Saucedo Lomelí.

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Curators text:

“Yo no quiero mas Bach puagh
Porque yo siento de un modo diferente
Si la cultura es Europa
la cultura es lo caro
Pues yo quiero entenderme con la gente”

Jorge Gonzalez (1986)
Excerpt from “Independencia Cultural”, song by Los Prisioneros

A few years ago, during the pandemic Era, a collecting initiative brought me to meet and work alongside the Chilean research-based artist Ignacio Gatica. We were tasked to identify objects which could memorialize the Latinx experience with a focus on Jackson Heights, Queens. The journey led us to understand the discrepancies in contemporary collecting methodologies and decided to get involved with the community to truly understand the conditions in which they were living, their fears, hopes and the artistry developed organically in their day-to-day routines. Monumento is a reflection of this experience, and embodies the work of twelve artists and designers from Latino-America and their diasporas, exploring alternative approaches to public memorialization, cartography, and nation-building. The residency documents artistic practices that center the human experience and memorialize collective efforts of the people to confront physical and ideological imposed monoliths, Western cartography, and paternalist memorialization.

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