THE PERILOUS JOURNEY OF MARÍA ROSA PALACIOS - KARINA SKVIRSKY IN VIGIL GONZALES

The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios is a seminal project in Skvirsky's work and has been previously exhibited at the Cuenca Biennial, Smack Mellon Gallery (Brooklyn) and the Amparo Museum in Puebla. It should be noted that Susanna V. Temkin (current curator at the Museo del Barrio in New York), has written a special text for the exhibition at VIGIL GONZALES Valle Sagrado.

The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios aims to recreate the journey that Skvirsky's great-grandmother made to reach the city from the Sierra del Ecuador before the railroad existed, not to mention more modern forms of travel. Fragmentation is not only caused by the Andes, but by other socio-political factors that seem to continue to be in force despite the distance in time between the original trip and Karina's performative recreation.

The exhibition presents works in various disciplines whose three-dimensionality is projected beyond the photographic plane and “metaphorically visualizes the unique subjectivity that informs the core of Skvirsky's practice, rooted as it is in the space between facts, fiction, memory and experience of her own personal narrative ”comments Temkin in her essay on the exhibition. “As the daughter of an American father of Eastern European Jewish origin and an Ecuadorian mother of Afro-indigenous descent, Skvirsky draws on her cross-cultural and intersectional heritage in much of her work (…) serving as a “door”, using the artist's own words, to explore the seemingly impossible, the forgotten and the inherited embedded in personal experience”, she adds.

Karina Skvirsky (Providence, 1969), is a renowned artist present in the institutional exhibition circuit in Latin America and the United States; in addition, recently, her incorporation into private European collections such as the Otazu Foundation and the Valzuela Foundation bring Skvirsky's work to a worldwide audience. She has also participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial (2010), Cuenca Biennial (2009, 2018, 2020), and has had individual exhibitions in numerous institutions, among which stands out her participation in the Dialogues section curated by Susanna V. Temkin and Rodrigo Moura in collaboration with the Museo del Barrio for Frieze NY; Sacred Geometry, Amparo Museum of Puebla, 2019 (MX); The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios, Smack Mellon Gallery (2017); among others. Skvirsky is part of recognized collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago); SFMOMA Library (San Francisco); Samuel Dorsky Museum (New York); New York Historical Society (New York); New York Public Library (New York); among others.

VIGIL GONZALES is conceived as a contemporary art gallery oriented to the visibility and promotion of artistic production within the Peruvian and Latin American scene. Conceived as a space for research and cultural, disciplinary and knowledge exchange, the gallery focuses on artists whose work dialogues with the socio-political issues of the region. Understanding art as a tool for political and social transformation, VIGIL GONZALES seeks to represent a group of artists who decode the conflicts embodied in everyday relationships. Thus, to account for the work of artists as creators of a sphere of discussion and dialogue that makes the public agenda a hallmark. Along these lines, the gallery also promotes research related to individual and national identities in relation to the geopolitical, economic and cultural factors of Latin America.