Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.
By JACK MORGAN • JUL 31, 2019

Three times a year, three different artists converge in San Antonio. One from Texas, one from the U.S. and one from somewhere else in the world come to participate in Artpace’s residency program with one directive: create.  

Those artists come to the three-story, 18,000 square foot Artpace downtown on North Main Street. Artpace Communications Director Scott Williams said Linda Pace designed this art incubator from an old Hudson car dealership.

“Linda herself was an artist and a dreamer and a philanthropist and a collector. And so she founded Artpace as this laboratory of dreams, as she called it,” he said.

She created that laboratory of dreams to expose the city to international arts. While here, each set of artists actually lives in Artpace’s  on-site apartments. Houston artist Francis Almendariz says Artpace’s help was elemental in his exhibit.

“It was a huge, huge help to have all of these resources and a team that fully believes in you and backs you up in every way possible,” he said. 

Almendariz created a multimedia  art piece, showing video of workers in Nicaragua and Honduras, making tortillas, creating counterfeit Nikes and pounding drums in a marketplace.

“It’s sort of like a living archive of history and memory and culture that you know gets passed down from generation to generation to generation,” Almendariz said.

He felt an obligation to capture the image of people who history will otherwise forget.

“Immigrant bodies and people migrate around the world and offer up their bodies and their labor and search for a better life,” he said.

The video of the man making Nike knock-offs shows his incessant work, and how the Mexican music on the radio seems to push his endeavors along. Almendariz notes that Hispanic workers at construction sites the world over almost always have Mexican music playing. 

“The radio playing kind of just kind of creates this atmosphere or to… it becomes almost meditative,” he said. 

The next artist was here all the way from Ecuador. Juana Córdova makes much of her art from plants and found objects. Before coming to Artpace, she already had an idea about what she might make. While she understands English, she spoke mostly through a translator named Leticia Rocha-Živadinović.

“I had already been researching desert flora and fauna. And I had already been real interested in the tumbleweed to talk about migration,” she said. 

The most eye-catching portion of Córdova’s exhibit features four clear tubes with fans at the bottom of each, blowing up a small tumbleweed, which tumbles over and over within the tube. Córdova explained the concept through the interpreter this way. 

“The keeping of these tumbleweeds captive within these tubes I’m making a reference to the migrants that are being held captive at the border, and being prevented from continuing on their natural path,” Rocha-Zivadinovič said. 

She said tumbleweeds blow across borders as if they don’t exist. As we spoke, the interpreter Leticia stopped and laughed uncomfortably, and put her head in her hands. She found it difficult to continue because she was crying. Córdova’s art about immigrant families separated and jailed at the border was a tough subject for the interpreter.

“This is something I have a very emotional response to,” she said. 

The last artist had already returned to New York. Residency Manager Erin Murphy described what the artist, who calls herself Narcissister, is all about.  

“The artist is a fictional character that the artist conceived of in 2007. She works primarily in performance she has done performances all over the world,” Murphy said.

Narcisster’s creations, like the other artists’ can be seen at Artpace through September 9. These waves of artists fly in every three months for eight weeks of creation.

After their stay, artists present their work, then head back home. The apartments are cleaned, then the next crop of three will come to create.

Linda Pace died in 2007, but Williams said her legacy continues to give rise to new artists, and expose San Antonio to them.

“Next year Artpace celebrates its 25th anniversary. We brought more than 230 artists and over 70 curators well-known in the field of art from all over the world to San Antonio to leave their mark and their impact here,” he said. 

You can see the work of the summer flock of artists, and other exhibitions at Artpace, seven days a week, and always for free. 

https://www.tpr.org/post/artpace-brings-artists-around-world-create-san-antonio?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR11ht4AuyI8DnK_-5qwGf9YDjQG2fyN-PHafELVV-MjlGEx0b6qWEpC5NQ#Echobox=1564587144

El Telégrafo
Redacción Cultura – 26 de julio de 2019 – 00:00

El Centro Cultural Metropolitano de Quito inaugura una muestra en la que artistas de Ecuador y Colombia platican, desde sus obras, con las problemáticas que abordó el viajero científico. Es parte de los 250 años de su natalicio.

Fernando Falconí arma ficciones a partir de mapas de enciclopedias sagradas, traslada Grecia a los campos mineros del sur, a la situación geográfica de América Latina. Él lo llama “despedagogizar” el mundo.

Juana Córdova toma muestras de sus recorridos por la playa, reconstruye un diálogo con las bestias del mar, para hacer del lugar en el que vive, una extensión de su obra.

José Hidalgo Anastacio replantea las medidas históricas del hombre occidental para reinterpretarlas, incluso trasladarlas a sus afectos.

Óscar Santillán ha intentado que sus investigaciones sobre los astros y el espacio exterior tengan un diálogo con conocimientos prehispánicos. Su ejercicio apuesta por reconocer las prácticas indígenas como una pieza de un estudio del cosmos.

Estos autores son parte de la muestra Humboldt Traspasar, el mito que se presentará en el Centro Cultural Metropolitano, mañana sábado 27 de julio, junto con las propuestas  de otros 12 artistas.

Entre estos se encuentran Alberto Baraya, José Alejandro Restrepo, Pablo Cardoso, Paula Barragán, Angélica Teuta, Antonio Bermúdez, Susana Mejía, Paúl Rosero Contreras, Gonzalo Vargas, Dennys Navas, José Luis Macas y Karina Skyvirsky.

Desde sus prácticas artísticas, cada uno provoca complejos diálogos entre los tropos, discursos e imaginarios movilizados a partir de la “reinvención” de América propuesta por Alexander von Humboldt: paisaje, mapa y territorio, viaje, exploración, cosmos y naturaleza.

La muestra forma parte de los actos por los 250 años del natalicio del estudioso y expedicionario alemán. (I)

 https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/cultura/10/artistas-dialogo-humboldt-quito-ecuador-colombia-natalicio

San Antonio Current
Posted By Kelly Merka Nelson on Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 1:47 pm

The latest round of Artpace’s International Artist-in-Residence program demands to be heard as much as seen. Each of the artists elected by guest curator Karina Aguilera Skvirsky has created visually distinct and seemingly disparate bodies of work, but the exhibitions are united by the presence of sound. 

Bryan Rindfuss

For “Chronicles of Uprooting,” Juana Córdova (Cuenca, Ecuador) collected samples of tumbleweed, an immigrant plant that made its way to the American West via a shipment of flaxseed from Russia, and achiote seeds, a plant common to the tropics of Latin America that has been used to give flavor and color to food, cosmetics and textiles since the Pre-Columbian era. The space is filled with a gentle droning, provided both by fans that keep three tumbleweeds spinning aloft in transparent tubes and a video installation featuring the frenetic movement of insects. From the winding roads of flattened tumbleweed unspooled on the wall to a diaspora of achiote seeds mounted in a corner, Córdova renders the journeys of immigrant peoples in miniature, metaphorically connecting the movement of flora to human migration worldwide.

Francis Almendárez (Houston) focuses on the rhythms of work both commercial and domestic in “rhythm and (p)leisure.” Shot in Honduras and El Salvador, the multi-screen video installation is abuzz with the myriad sounds of human tasks, whether it be a man hammering the soles of counterfeit Nike sneakers, a woman gently sweeping a tile floor or a group drumming on a street corner. From the rushed pace of the city to the more leisurely speed of the countryside, Almendárez has captured the processes of human work, both material and immaterial, and reveals how even activities we view as leisure are still “work” in their own right. Piles of clothes on pallets offer the viewer a place to sit or recline, but this is merely a brief respite before the garments reenter the global circulation of sale, resale and disposal.

Masked artist Narcissister (New York, New York) is a provocateur whose performance art has been seen in venues from burlesque clubs to America’s Got Talent. While functionally silent, the bombastic imagery of the erotic collages included in “Wimmin” are loud in their own way, unapologetically confronting the intersection of femininity, race and sexuality. However, the artist’s work also possesses an auditory component that arises when pieces are “activated” (a term she isn’t particularly fond of) in performance. During the free opening reception, performances will cycle every half hour, featuring small gestures such as the swishing of the fabric of a formal dress as it’s wrapped around a body encased in a bale of aluminum cans and the echoing clank of the pan-eyelids of an assembled face being opened by an anonymous performer, who completes the structure’s features with a large, pierced nose worn on her back.

https://www.sacurrent.com/ArtSlut/archives/2019/07/18/artpace-unveils-work-by-juana-cordova-francis-almendarez-and-narcissister-for-its-latest-international-artist-in-residence-exhibitions