Monday, September 15, 2014

A conversation with María Elena Ortiz

Thursday 18 September, 2014, 7 pm, at Alice Yard


María Elena Ortiz is a Miami-based Puerto Rican curator and the 2014 recipient of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean. In September 2014, she will spend a week at Alice Yard as researcher in residence. On Thursday 18 September, at 7 pm, she will give an informal talk at Alice Yard on her current curatorial interests.

Her talk will focus on examples of video and performance art practices in contemporary art, and the possible roles of the curator. Video artists discussed will include José “Bubu” Negrón, Christian Jankowski, Isaac Torres, Nuria Montiel, and other artists making works about Caribbean dynamics.

All are invited.


About María Elena Ortiz:

María Elena Ortiz currently works as a curatorial assistant at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). Previously, she worked as the curator of contemporary arts at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, where she organised several projects, including Carlos Motta, The Shape of Freedom (2013), and Rita Ponce de León, David (2013). She has also collaborated with institutions such as TEOR/éTica, San Jose, Costa Rica; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; and New Langton Arts, San Francisco, among others. In 2012, she curated Wherever You Roam at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California. Ortiz has contributed to writing platforms including Fluent Collaborative, Curating Now, and DaWire. She has a Masters in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts (2010).

About the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Travel Award:

The Cisneros Award supports a contemporary art curator based anywhere in the world to travel to Central America and the Caribbean to research art and cultural activities in the region. Ortiz will use the award to visit new and established contemporary art centres, artist initiatives, and film festivals in the Caribbean countries of Aruba, the Bahamas, Martinique, and Trinidad and Tobago. She will conduct interviews with local cultural producers and studio visits with artists to investigate film and video practices with the aim of strengthening the ties between art in the Caribbean and the Diaspora in the local community of Miami, as well as nurturing contemporary approaches to film and video in the region.

No comments: