Curatorial Statement

Over the past five years, research and material exploration exercises around the American continent have catapulted a circuit of new avenues for self-preservation and communal legacy in the arts. Projects such as "La Rentrada" by the Venezuelan artist, Maria Elena Pombo, or "La Blue Bee" by the also Venezuelan biologist, Marco Caputo, opened the ground for me to chart new cartographies at a personal level, focused on materialism and possible futures. Artists such as Charlie Quezada, Julianny Ariza, Nathalie Landestoy, and Thimo Pimentel, have been exploring the Caribbean and rescuing through their work the complex Caribbean relationship with the precarious, material, and historiographic. Using his work as a propelling engine to expand this knowledge, and reconnect with territories, their inhabitants, and botany. Others have developed duo explorations that encompass gastronomy design and science, such as the pieces today presented by the Dominican-Swiss chef Olivier Bur and designer Fabio Hendry.

Equally returns to traditional materials such as analog documentary photography and artisanal cinematography create opportunities to expand the visuals of an ever-changing America. The work of the Ecuadorian artist, Andrés Altamirano, and the filmmaker, Guy Kozac, bring us today visuals of surfaces, textile utopia, and flora of Guatemaltec soil on the other side of the sea, physically explored by the Guatemantec-London duo Agnes Studio. Trying to weave together these legacies and intergenerational friendships, I got to the work of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Ruby, a duo of academics who from MIT embarked on co-creating with their students methodologies focused on speculation and error as a trigger for self-management. Which as the final piece holds two columns, with which I am building this house today, and those that will follow.