El Museo’s Bienal 2013: “Here is Where we Jump”

This installation of La Bienal is curated by El Museo Curator Rocío Aranda-Alvarado and Raúl Zamudio, an independent New York-based curator .

This year, La Bienal features Brazil as the special guest country. This represents an opportunity for El Museo to remain in conversation with similar urban artistic landscapes throughout Latin American and the Caribbean.

The artists and works in the La Bienal are as diverse in their backgrounds as they are in their creative processes. From Chilean artist Julia San Martin, whose experimental expressionistic work reflects on the violence and persecution experienced by civilians living under a dictatorship, to Puerto Rican artist and Bronx native Manny Vega’s exploration and celebration of collective memory and the shared histories of the African diaspora in the Americas. Likewise, the methods and processes of the artists range from recycling materials to producing traditional objects, as is the case in Sean Paul Gallegos’s exploration of ethnography and sneakers, to Cuban artist Pavel Acosta’s exploration of art and scarcity through Wallscape,” an intervention into El Museo’s gallery walls using stolen paint. La Bienal 2013 showcases paintings, drawings, video, sculptures, installations, and performances.

Since its first edition in 1999, La Bienal – formerly known as The (S) Files – has been a significant means for creating ties between institutions and artists, while building networks and opportunities for a wide variety of talented Latino artists. La Bienal alumni include Firelei Baez, Allora & Calzadilla, Margarita Cabrera, Alejandro Cesarco, Richard Garett, Pablo Helguera, Tamara Kostianovsky, Carlos Motta, and Iván Navarro.

The exhibition was designed to provide a platform for artists who may not be represented in larger artistic institutions, and who have never shown at El Museo. Through this survey, La Bienal hopes to bring visibility to their work and their creative process. La Bienal is interested in the conditions under which works of art are made and how they are received by the public. The artists’ methods and processes are of significance, as is the context in which they are created and interpreted. El Museo’s Bienal celebrates the experimental and experiential aspects of contemporary art, and supports the notion that this production is part of the history of contemporary American art.

Artists featured in La Bienal 2013 are: Damali abrams, Lucas Arruda, Pavel Acosta, Hector Arce Espasas, Ernesto Burgos, Miguel Cárdenas, Ernest Concepción, Matias Cuevas, 5ifty5ive & Les Carbonell, Jonathas de Andrade, Patricia Domínguez & Dominika Ksel, Becky Franco, Sean Paul Gallegos, Paula Garcia, Ignacio González-Lang, Kathleen Granados, Alejandro Guzmán, Pablo Jansana, Sara Jimenez & Kaitlynn Redell, Élan Jurado, Renata Lucas, Ramón Miranda Beltrán, Bernardo Navarro Tomás, Alex Nuñez, Giandomenico Tonatiuh Pellizzi, Risa Puno, Eric Ramos Guerrero, Christopher Rivera, Kenny Rivero, Julia San Martín, Gabriela Salazar, Gabriela Scopazzi, Edgar Serrano, Mel Xiloj, and Manuel Vega.