Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021 at 3 pm
Description
The pandemic has changed access to nature and the landscape. These artists explore their connection with nature, flora, or fauna by using found materials, abstracted printing processes, documentation, and illustration. Nature is re-printed and re-grown through their work.
Moderator
Andrea Guerrero
Andrea A. Guerrero is a writer and educator based in Orange County, CA. She earned her MA in art history at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) in 2020. Her research interests include the art of contemporary Latin America with an emphasis on aesthetic strategies developed to question, queer, and redefine marginalized subjectivities. In her MA thesis, “The Being/Becoming Object: Strategies in Unfolding, Disrupting, and Becoming in Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art,” Guerrero analyzes the relevance of Latin American conceptualism to the practices of contemporary Latin American and Latinx women artists engaged in the queering of social and political discourse. She most recently contributed to the anthology "In and Out of View:
Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression, and Censorship" (Bloomsbury Publishing: 2021).
Speakers
Gloria Sanchez
gloriaemsanchez.wixsite.com/gems-1
Working and residing in the Harbor Area / South bay of Tovaangar (Los Angeles), Gloria “Gem” Sanchez earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting with a minor in Art Education from Cal State Puvungna (Long Beach) in 2014. She is a Xicana-Filipina American multidisciplinary artist, arts facilitator,and curator that works in fibers, installation, drawing, and painting. Her recent work combines sculpture and weaving to create a fusion of natural and contemporary materials that carry meanings that are significant to her family and where they come from. Gloria is inspired by memories, stories, dreams, and motifs gathered from her hybrid cultural identities, spiritual cosmologies, and decolonial way of life. She creates art as a vehicle to heal personal and familial intergenerational trauma, honoring those who came before, and finding ways to merge past and present narratives. Her intention is to transpose these shapes and symbols into works that have a connection to the ancestral, feminine, matriarchal, and animistic worldviews of pre-colonial cultures.
Gloria is an alumni and affiliate of Slanguage Studio founded by Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz. She has worked within the local and broader Tovaangar (Los Angeles) community over the years to generate grassroots art actions. She was part of WECAN (Wilmington Enrichment Community Artist Network) from 2009-2011 who occupied ‘ghost gallery’ spaces and local shops to produce art events, as well as Ell@s collective from 2011-2013, a feminist/queer facilitated group that also worked together for creating space for each other to heal, community arts engagement, and activism revolving around violence against womxn-identifying people in the harbor area. In recent years after graduating, Gloria has been an active member of FA4 Collective, which runs as an informal CSULB alumni association and works together to facilitate art shows, residencies, community engagement, as well as to maintain a supportive space to help each other develop as artistic professionals and cultural producers. She is also on the core committee of the Many Winters Gathering of Elders that takes place on Chowingna (Angels Gate Cultural Center), a Native led grassroots cohort that brings together Native American Elders from across Turtle Island to share Medicine and Ancestral Knowledge with an emphasis on collective healing and ceremony.
Gloria has exhibited work at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Angel’s Gate Cultural Center, Cerritos College Far Bazaar, Downtown Art Center Gallery, Pasadena City College, LA><ART, Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles Water School, Consulado Mexicano de Los Ángeles, Mini Art Museum, MOCA Geffen Plaza, El Comalito Collective, Pintados Philippine Art Gallery, LeiMin Space, Angel City Brewery,Machine Studio, and Art Share LA.
Álvaro D. Márquez
Álvaro D. Márquez is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and researcher who works primarily with printmaking, fiber art, sculpture, and installation. Their work explores issues around social, racial, and gender inequality and engages questions about the self, history, and one’s place in it. Since leaving academia to pursue a career in art, their work has examined historical and contemporary forms of displacement in the shaping of the American West generally, and the urban expanse we now call Los Angeles specifically.
Evelyn Yin
Evelyn Hang Yin is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Yin investigates how her experience moving between China and the U.S. informs her cultural identity, and is invested in issues of race, history, place/displacement, and collective memory.
Dakota Noot
dakota.noot@gmail.com
Dakota Noot is a Los Angeles-based artist and curator. He uses drawings, paintings, and installations to create animal-human hybrids that explore rural yet fantastical, queer identities. Originally from Bismarck, North Dakota, he continues to show in both North Dakota and Los Angeles, including solo and two-person shows at Highways Performance Space, MuzeuMM, and PØST. Noot has exhibited in group shows at Charlie James Gallery, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Torrance Art Museum, and LAST Projects. His series of cutout drawing-installations have been shown at LA Freewaves, Cerritos College Art Gallery, and Otis College.
Christopher Velasco
christopheravelasco.wixsite.com/cav-photography
christopheravelasco@gmail.com
Christopher Anthony Velasco is a photographer and performance artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. He emphasizes the queer brown body incorporating horror and camp aesthetics. Christopher received his Master of Fine Arts from UC Santa Barbara in 2019. He received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts. As a Getty Marrow Undergraduate Intern, Velasco interned at the Santa Monica Museum of Art(Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) and UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center and Library. Velasco is an instructor at CSSSA (California State Summer School of the Arts). Velasco’s work has been featured in exhibitions at Art Center College of Design, AD&A Museum, Avenue 50 Studios, California Institute of the Arts, Hibbleton Gallery, the Getty Museum, and the Vincent Price Art Museum. In addition, he has also performed with Harry Gamoba, Jr., with Virtual Verite, Los Angeles Union Station, UC Santa Barbara, and LAST Projects.