Day 4: Sunday, December 7, 2014, Art Basel Miami: myself and colleague, Joanna Szupinska-Myers from UCR California Museum of Photography, visited artist Juana Valdes at Fountainhead Studios as research for our Latin American science fiction project that is part of the Getty Foundations Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA project. s a multi-disciplinary artist Juana Valdes’ work traces, recollects, and records her own personal experience of migration. Her artwork is informed by her Afro-Cuban ethnicity and the experience of growing up in America. Juana Valdes’ most current work elicits migration as a complex process, constructing history through a continuum that involves both the homespace of the diasporic community along with their new homeland. Juana examines the post-colonial history of the Americas and the current representation of Latinos, Caribbean citizens, Blacks or what the current “Other” is in vogue in mainstream America, reflecting on what is ascribed, contested, and granted. This ethno-social exploration serves as the raw material for her aesthetic and formal investigation, as it circumscribes issues of transmutation via the everyday object, as a personal and time-based reference that is diachronic in orientation. In Juana’s new series of ceramic pieces entitled “Colored China Rags”, she chose to work with Bone China for its history of trade between Europe and Asia and its ever-shifting value as a commodity. Bone China is separate from all the other porcelain for its whiteness and translucency. In altering the clay “body” by inserting pigment directly to the clay, she is changing its chemical composition, thus bringing into consciousness past histories in present day experiences that engage social justice to question economic inequalities due to race, class, and gender prejudice. These works question how aesthetics and value is assigned and maintained through the production of mass produce objects. juanamvaldes/blog/ getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/current/pst_lala/
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 01:15:18 +0000
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