Grotesques
Main Gallery
February 23 – March 21, 2008
Curated by: Lissette Olivares
Copresented by: FADO
Performances Saturday February 23, starting at 6:30 pm
6:30 David Khang, Untitled
6:45 Naufus Ramirez Figueroa, White Slavery in Toronto
7:15 Irene Loughlin, Mythical Grotesques
8:00 Cheto Castellano, Pies con Barro and Muddied Feet
8:45 Nao Bustamante, Given over to Want
Grotesques must be thought of as a site of experimentation, where risk is a seductive ally that pries open the aperture for possibility. In this collective exhibition, the grotesque is invoked as a realm of mutative, transitional, and transgressive potentiality. Employing a range of taboo materials, themes, and forms, the artists move beyond the expected, searching for unconventional ways into the audience’s sensorium. Through symbolic inversion, this group of artist-agents emphasize a return of the repressed, amplifying contemporary political issues that exist within our everyday experience.
Nao Bustamante is an internationally acclaimed performance and video artist whose work has been exhibited around the world. She has received the Anonymous Was a Woman, NYFA, and Lambent fellowships.
Juan ‘Cheto’ Castellano is a Chilean contemporary artist whose work explores the aesthetics of the taboo. His multimedia work analyzes the construction of postcolonial/postmodern identities in Latin American and Third World diasporas.
Naufus Ramirez Figueroa is a Guatemalan-Canadian artist working in video, installation, and performance. His work touches issues related to war and diaspora. He�s a recipient of the Franklin Furnace Performance Art Fund.
David Khang uses language as a trope to interrogate constructions and performativity of gender and race. He is a 2006-7 recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art.
Irene Loughlin’s interdisciplinary work questions and reworks visual representations of trauma, suffering, and resistance; she is a recipient of the Lynch Staunton Canada Council award for excellence.
Natalie Loveless is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness Department at UCSC. Her work includes conversation-based installation, social intervention work and more traditional forms of durational action-art.
Coco Rico’s aim as an artist is to expose systemic injustices and to break the constricting rules of propriety through a summoning of the carnivalesque within public spaces.
Lissette Olivares is a theorist, critic and curator. As a cultural diplomat she promotes avant-garde practices and the careers of marginal artists; her PhD analyzes cultural resistance during Chile’s dictatorship.
