Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza in conversation
Beatriz Cortez: Cosmic Portals
Special Event and Closing Reception
Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture: Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza in conversation
Tuesday, April 12, 2022, 4:15 p.m.
Benson Auditorium
rafa esparza, Earth Eye, 2021, adobe bricks, wood, plastic, installation view (detail), were-:Nenetech Forms, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, October 8, 2021 – March 12, 2022. Photo: Evan Zavitz
Join us for Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza in conversation as they discuss their practice and engage with the ancient idea of the unfolding of worlds as a continuum and as the context for their exploration of cyborgs, hyperobjects, and gestures as acts of generosity across time and space.
Masks are required for this event and guests must complete a health screening before arriving on campus: https://bit.ly/3Nzt52l
Guests from off-campus must register for a free admission ticket at Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/370eAUe
Followed by a closing reception
5:30 – 7 p.m.
Pitzer College Art Galleries
Beatriz Cortez (b. 1970, San Salvador, El Salvador; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores simultaneity, life in different temporalities, and different versions of modernity, particularly in relation to memory and loss in the aftermath of war and the experience of migration, and in relation to imagining possible futures. Cortez received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies from Arizona State University.
Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Pitzer College Art Galleries (2022); ICA San Diego, CA (2021); Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles (2019); Occidental College, Los Angeles (2019); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2018); Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2016); and Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2016).
Cortez has participated in group exhibitions at Frieze Projects in Los Angeles (2022); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CA (2021, 2016); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Panama (2021); Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center in New York, NY(2020); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA (2020); Wattis Art Institute, San Francisco, CA (2020); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO), Bogota, Colombia (2019); TEOR/éTica in San José, Costa Rica (2019); Ballroom Marfa, TX (2019); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2019); John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); and Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador (2016). Cortez is the recipient of the Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), the inaugural Frieze LIFEWTR Sculpture Prize (2019), the Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts (2019), the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018), the Artist Community Engagement Grant (2017), and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016). Her solo exhibition Cosmic Portals is currently on view at Pitzer College Art Galleries. In addition, her work is being exhibited at the ICA San Diego north campus in Encinitas, CA; in FUTURES at the Smithsonian Arts + Industry in Washington D.C.; and Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities at Tufts University Art Galleries in Boston, MA.
rafa esparza (b. 1981, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work reveals his interests in history, personal narratives, and kinship, his own relationship to colonization and the disrupted genealogies that it produces. esparza employs site-specificity, materiality, memory, and what he calls (non)documentation as primary tools to investigate and expose ideologies, power structures, and binary forms of identity that establish narratives, history, and social environments. esparza’s recent projects are grounded in laboring with land and adobe-making, a skill learned from his father, Ramón Esparza. In so doing, the artist invites Brown and Queer cultural producers to realize large-scale collective projects, gathering people together to build networks of support outside of traditional art spaces.
Solo exhibitions have been held at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2021); MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2019); ArtPace, San Antonio, TX (2018); Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA (2017); Ballroom Marfa, TX (2017); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CA (2015); Bowtie Project, Los Angeles (2015); and Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park, CA (2013). esparza has performed at art institutions including Performance Space New York and the Ellipse, Washington, D.C. (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); and Clockshop, Bowtie Project, Los Angeles (2014). Selected group shows were held at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2021); Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2021); Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX (2020); Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); San Diego Art Institute, CA (2019); DiverseWorks, Houston, TX (2019); Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles (2019); GAMMA Galeria, Guadalajara, Mexico (2019); Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NV (2017); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); LA><ART, CA (2017); PARTICIPANT, INC., New York (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); and Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena (2015). esparza is a recipient of the US Latinx Artist Fellowship (2021), Lucas Artists Fellowship (2020), Artpace International Artist Residency (2018), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2017), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2015), California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts (2014), and Art Matters Foundation grant (2014).
WORLD IS WATCHING – MANIFESTO