Panel Discussion: Exploring the Politics of Space in Vernacular Glamour
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Panel Discussion: Exploring the Politics of Space in Vernacular Glamour
Join us for a conversation about the politics of space in Vernacular Glamour with exhibiting artists Maria Yolanda Liebana, Juan Arango Palacios, and Rixy. By using glamour to chart more expansive ways of being, the artworks in this exhibition also point to the issues and possibilities of physical, digital, and imagined spaces. Hear from the artists about their engagements with social media platforms, celestial spaces, the nightclub, nature, and public space and learn more about their expansive artistic practices beyond their work in Vernacular Glamour. This panel will be moderated by exhibition curator, Juan Omar Rodriguez.
About Maria Yolanda Liebana
Maria Yolanda Liebana (she/they) lives and works in New York. Her work is fueled by obsession with celebrity, pop motifs, media in all formats, aesthetics, and excessive consumption, as well as the seductive promises that these symbols offer. Maria confronts wealth inequality, racial and gender stereotyping, and her own disillusionment with the American dream as a first-generation Latinx artist. As part of her practice, she collects high- and low-end art materials and reassembles them with organic, abstract forms and feminine signifiers - reclaiming these once familiar material goods to form objects with new value and meaning. And through a process of attraction and repulsion, Maria satisfies her personal consumerist desires, achieving a sense of empowerment, and shaping her identity in a hyperconnected and materialist society. She is a recipient of 2018 and 2020 Queens Council on the Arts New Work Artist Grant and attended Vermont Studio Center and Pickwick Independent Press residency programs. She is a Board Member and Education coordinator of Local Project Art Space in Long Island City.
About Juan Arango Palacios
Juan Arango Palacios (they/them) was born in Pereira, Colombia, and was raised in a traditional Catholic home. Their traditional upbringing was cut short by a series of migrations from Colombia to southern Louisiana and Texas. Juan’s practice addresses the lived experiences of ambulant queer identities that have been marginalized within a diasporic or migratory context. Through the fluid and boundless medium of paint, they represent memories, places, people, and archetypes associated with the safety, survival, and endurance of queer bodies. Through the process of weaving, Juan also produces narrative objects that aim at expressing the stories of individuals within a similar context. Placing emphasis on color and composition, their work aims at creating images glorifying and fantasizing the idea of safety in a queer experience. Juan received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020 and is now living and making work about the queer Latinx experience in Chicago, IL.
About Rixy
Rixy (she/her) conceptualizes feminine divinity in their various forms and characterizations. Working primarily through painting, sculpture, and public art, her works reinterpret stories of agency—like episodes of a never-ending cartoon. The works often play on the range of sensual femininity: how bodies react, the senses they pick up, and what it means for them to be born, to grow, and heal in their surroundings. Rixy received her BA in Studio Art at UMass Boston, with a concentration in sculpture. She received the 2019 Ruth Butler Travel Fellowship for a Studio Residency in Mexico, and the 2017 Arts|Learning Award for Student Arts Advocacy. She is an Adjunct Instructor at the Boston Architectural College.
About Ginger Q
The status quo bends to make way for new dimensions in the practice of Latinx artist Ginger Q (she/her). She was born in Guadalajara and raised in Los Angeles. Having trained in the workshops of her neon mentors while obtaining a BFA at CalArts, Ginger Q unites technical craft with a conceptual approach across an inventory of mediums. Manifesting through sculpture, large-scale installation, & digital mediums, Ginger Q’s immersive work lures the viewer in with their charged interplay of light, color, and form. Disentangled from their industrial origins, heavy-duty materials – acrylic, metal, neon – chart different courses, carrying an energy that veers between fragility and danger. Elements that at first appear resolute bend, melt and morph once subjected to heat, revealing their pliability. In its transformative arc, Ginger Q’s creative process is equally one of deconstruction. Collaborative and divergent from linearity, her practice dismantles norms and calls common codes into question. In their place, power dynamics recalibrate and unconventional narratives begin to take form.
About Juan Omar Rodriguez
Juan Omar Rodriguez (he/him) is a curator of contemporary art. He is a Curatorial Fellow at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia, PA. Juan Omar’s recent projects include Linger and Flow at PAFA, TBD at Boston CyberArts in collaboration with the Boston LGBTQIA+ Artist Alliance, and SMFA at Tufts: Juried Student Exhibition 2019–2020 at the MFA Boston. He received an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from Tufts University in 2019 and a B.A. in Neuroscience from Oberlin College in 2017.
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