PROYECTO PRISMAS
PROYECTO PRISMAS
The Prismas Project was created in Mexico by the artist Juan Pablo Mapeto, in 2021, as a result of the need to bring closer dialogue among artists of different nationalities who, through the use of different media, converge in different points throughout the investigation of the processes and methodologies in the artistic production.
As the prism changes color as it moves, generating a range of reflections and light dispersion, the project considers that each artist is part of the edges of the prism. Through the entry and intersection of ideas, an archive of processes is created, and a set of reflections emerge contributing to new visions, concepts and poetics. Dispersion occurs in the projections of the results obtained from this diversity of experience.
The first Prismas exhibition took place in São Paulo at the Gruta Cultural Center in 2022 and was curated by the artist Juan Pablo Mapeto, who, during his stay in Mexico City, worked to bring together the group of artists who started the project. This first edition included works by four artists: Ali Cotero; Daniela Terroba; Matias Solar; and Valeria Montoya, whose production is based in Mexico City, establishing a link with the diversity of artistic proposals between the two Latin American megalopolises.
In 2024, the second Prismas exhibition will take place at Selva Gallery in New York, presenting a vision of the emerging artistic practices of artists from Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Mexico. This new edition is the result of new artists joining the group in the last few years and the strengthening of the group's discussions and exchange of diverse experiences. The exhibition features: André Penteado, Anna Bigão, Céu Isatto, Júlio Vieira and Luís Só from Brazil; Matias Solar, Camilo Salas and Hector Llanquin from Chile; Gabriela Velazco and Lorenzo Freidell from Colombia; and Ali Cotero, Angela Leyva, Daniela Terroba, Margot Kalach, Santiago Gómez, Valeria Montoya from Mexico.
In addition, the project seeks to establish more organic links with the exhibition venues, involving Latin American artists who live and work in each specific place. This not only enriches the exhibition with a local perspective, but also strengthens the ties between the artists and their host communities.
In this way, the project seeks to consolidate research and the creation of archives on the working processes of Latin American artists living in different parts of the world. It also seeks to establish links between different researches and perspectives, and to promote a global dialogue that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries
Artists
Artists' biographies
Alí Cotero (Mexico City, México, 1985) cultural manager, curator, and researcher of contemporary art, currently directing the Oficina de Acompañamientos Tlaxcala3. The axis of his practice is the constellation of collaborative work networks to articulate related critical thinking. His lines of interest start from the strategies of Latin American processual conceptualisms, such as mail art and visual poetry, to work in collective formats, memory in domestic contexts and everyday life, as well as public and private experiences in non-institutional archives. She has collaborated with various institutions such as Casa Vecina, Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes INBAL. of Fine Arts INBAL.
Daniela Terroba Schlam (Mexico City, México, 1991) attended courses in painting, drawing, fresco and classical techniques at the Accademia d'Arte in Florence (Italy). She has a degree in Plastic and Visual Arts from the National School of Painting and Sculpture "La Esmeralda" (Mexico City). Her practice has focused mainly on painting, but she also explores other media such as ceramics, installation, and dance. She has held artistic residencies in Quintana Roo, Mexico City and Turkey. She founded SOLOS, a space dedicated to the creation and research of Monotipias. The studio is an open space for residencies. He has exhibited collectively in different places such as Sao Paulo, New York and Quito. She has had three solo exhibitions. She currently works in her studio in Mexico City.
Matías Solar (Santiago de Chile, Chile) Chilean artist who currently lives and works in Mexico. His work has involved experimenting with different forms of translation, assimilation and appropriation of the pictorial medium. His current research processes deal with how new technologies of image and control affect the intersecting zones of the social and individual within Latin American contexts. His career began at the School of Painting of the ARCIS University (Chile) and from there he has been involved in several institutional participations in Chile and abroad as MERMA M.A.C. - Museum of Contemporary Art (Santiago de Chile, 2010); HYPERINFLACION, Chilean representation at the International Biennial of Young Art (MOMMA, Moscow, Russia, 2013); SUB 30 Contemporary Chilean Painting in the Museum of Contemporary Art (Santiago, 2014). His work has been exhibited in independent spaces throughout the continent such as Sagrada Mercancía, Relaciones Públicas Matucana 100, Ladrón Públicas Matucana 100, Ladrón Galería. He is the founder of the collective space dedicated to painting Fuego CDMX.
Valeria Montoya (Mexico City, Mexico) uses speculative fiction and the archaeology of suspicion to examine notions of history, modernity, and the political epistemology of the body. She works primarily with materials and analog techniques, including human hair, devices and electromagnetic technologies, as well as the senso-motor interaction of the body assisted by sunlight.
Margot Kalach (Mexico City, México, 1992) graduated from Bard College with a degree in photography (2016). She participated in the SOMA Mexico Academic Program (2017-2019). She was a recipient of the FONCA Jóvenes Creadores scholarship (2019) and a resident at Casa Wabi (2021). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has had three solo exhibitions: 08J3C71V17Y (Bard NY, 2016), El Sueño de la Piedra (Ex Convento Tepoztlán, 2021), and Reverberaciones (Cordoba Lab, Oaxaca, 2022). She has participated in fairs such as La Feria del Millón 2019 (Bogotá, Colombia) and PhotoLondon 2023 (London, United Kingdom).
Experiment, play and accident are an important basis of the artist's material universe. On a large scale, the projects seek to bring subjectivity back to the center of the scientific models, mechanical systems and structures of knowledge that are now at the center of our daily lives. Margot emphasizes technologies, the organic and complex evolution of time and matter, and the philosophy and speculation of science as tools of creation.
Santiago Gómez (Bogotá, Colombia, 1992) is an artist and researcher based in Mexico City. He graduated from the Universidad Distrital (Colombia, thesis with distinction) in 2016 and from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Universidad de la Salle (Colombia) in 2015. He has a Master degree in Visual Arts at UNAM (2020, honorable mention). He is currently pursuing a PhD in Visual Arts at the UNAM. He was part of the 2019 generation of the educational program SOMA (Mexico). In 2016 he won the creation scholarship "Caldas Ilustrado" of the Universidad Distrital (Colombia). In 2018 he participated in the Feria del Millón (Colombia) and the FAMA Fair (Mexico). In the same year he obtained the Zona 6 residency at the Luis Adelantado Gallery (México). In 2019 he participated in the Cobertizo residency (Mexico). In 2020 he participated in the FAIN Fair (Mexico) and won the call "Ensayos transmediales" launched by Toda La Teoría del Universo (Chile) and the 18th edition of Terremoto (Mexico). In 2021 he was invited to participate in the Residencia Art Project (Mexico). Since 2019, he co-manages CROMA, a space dedicated to the production and exhibition of contemporary art projects. He has had solo exhibitions as well as various group exhibitions (Colombia, Mexico, Greece, Italy and Spain). His practice navigates the inconsistencies of a highly unstable world through intervention and the design of fictions: 'hybrid objects' that question the ideological charges of matter and its hypercultural status.
Ángela Leyva Gómex (Mexico City, Mexico, 1987) lives and works in Mexico City. When I was born, my father was finishing his specialization as a geneticist and at some point we had to accompany him to his residence, so I have always been familiar with the clinical and medical issues. Always surrounded by his books, cases and his stories, which I understand cultivate a lot of my imagination and personal aesthetics and as an artist. My work evolves around the creation of portraits. These are built through inquiring into the narratives of different individuals and their peculiarities, as well as investigating their objects and/or archives. I consider these personal fragments as vestiges or clues to be rebuilt. These places provide me with the substance and matter to structure a series of works, which become poetic metaphors of the subjects themselves. My work reflects upon the individual as the minimum unit of society, and as an inexhaustible source of inquiry, which can establish the guidelines to understand our different contexts as humanity.
André Penteado (São Paulo, Brazil, 1970) lives and works in São Paulo. Since 2007, André has been working regularly in the field of photography, exploring key facts and events in Brazilian history, as well as personal moments of great emotional intensity. The artist has had several solo and group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. In 2013, he won the Pierre Verger Photography Prize, one of Brazil's most important visual arts awards, for his work O Suicídio de meu pai (My Father's Suicide). In 2014, his project "Tudo está relacionado" was selected for the Rumos Itaú Cultural Program, and in 2017 he was a finalist for the Conrado Wessel Photography Award with French Mission. In 2019 he won the Chico Albuquerque Photography Award with his work Cabanagem.
Anna Bigão (Catanduva, Brazil, 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2016 she graduated in Fine Arts from the Centro Universitário Belas Artes in São Paulo. She has participated in: Performa sp-arte 2015 at the São Paulo Biennial; Exhibition program at Marp in Ribeirão Preto (Brazil, 2017); A menina mais feia da turma, Ateliê 397 (São Paulo, Brazil, 2019); Abre Alas 14, Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2022); Monstros são coisas selvagens, Galeria Asfalto (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2022); 2023, Catavento 22 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2023); Buffet Dinamite, Caroço Projeto (São Paulo, Brazil, 2023); Cronicamente Online, 25M Salão de Projetos (São Paulo, Brazil, 2023); Pedacinho’s Island, Funarte (São Paulo, Brazil, 2023).
Anna Bigão is a multi-media artist who uses various manual processes in her work, such as sculpture, photography, painting, collage and drawing. Her work presents frenetic and chaotic fictions that address issues such as hyper-consumerism, self-image in the Internet age, mass production, waste disposal, information overload, and the use of materials and combinations not so common in the art market.
Luis Só (Brazil) is an ex-gaúcho, now citizen of the world. I'm a multimedia artist with a degree in Physical Education from Universidade Luterana do Brasil (ULBRA, Brazil), Graphic Design from Universidade Estácio de Sá (Brazil) and Arts from Visual Arts School form Parque Lage (Brazil). Vocalist of the band "Nicolas não tem Banda" and one of the founders of Ouvidor 63 (Artist-Occupation - São Paulo, Brazil), where I lived until the first semester of 2019. My art is inspired by Lowbrow - also known as Pop Surrealism. I also draw influences from music, literature, media, schizophrenia and Afro culture. From 2008 to 2012, I participated as an Artist in Transit in the Papel Pinel program at the Philippe Pinel Institute (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). In 2014 I moved to São Paulo (Brazil) and joined the collective Androides Andrógenos to create the artistic occupation Ouvidor 63. In 2018, I was part of the collective curatorial team for the 2nd Ouvidor 63 Art Biennial, which was nominated for the Select Magazine Award for Art and Education; in parallel, I participated in the Skate Point project (Ouvidor 63 Occupation). In the second half of 2019, I participated in the artistic collective Colabirinto (Brazil). In 2020, together with Perfume Skt Co. I created the shape artwork for Rodrigo Kbeça Lima - the first openly gay professional skateboarder in Brazil and manager of the in Brazil and head of the Vans Brasil skateboarding team.
Gabriela Velazco (Bogotá, Colombia) is a visual artist who lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. In March 2023 she had her first solo exhibition in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, where she lived for an intense period. In 2017, she graduated in Visual Arts at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia. Since 2014 she has participated in several group exhibitions in institutional and autonomous spaces. She has also participated in art residencies in Brazil and internship programs in Argentina. Parallel to her artistic production, she has continuously worked in coordination, communication, research, training, visual development, support and production for different projects, artists and art and cultural spaces between Colombia and the Latin American region.
Júlio Vieira (Osasco, Brazil, 1985) is a visual artist. Vieira researches the construction of urban imagery and its relationship to affective memory, popular culture, art history, everyday objects, and the nature hidden within these spaces. He has a bachelor's degree in design, worked as a designer and art director in the advertising market, and started his professional career as a visual artist in 2016. He also studied "The Creative Process" at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts (Brazil), under the guidance of Charles Watson. He has exhibited in institutions such as Centro Cultural Correios in Niterói (Brazil), Casa de Cultura do Parque and Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade in São Paulo (Brazil). He was a finalist in the 11th Dasartes Magazine Prize and has works in public and private collections such as the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) in Rio de Janeiro and SENAC Guarulhos in São Paulo (Brazil). He has created murals in different places in Brazil and abroad, such as SESC Ipiranga, SESC Carmo, SESC Pinheiros, Fundação Bradesco and Raum für urbane Experimente in Kassel, Germany.
Céu Isatto (Porto Alegre, Brazil) is a non-binary trans artist whose research focuses on issues related to language, error, contamination, noise and failed translation in the context of contemporary art, memory, fact-fiction and the trans body. Céu starts from an amalgamation of references from both the history of art and culture and personal memories and notes (written or images) made over the years to create an image repertoire of its own based on the contexts that surround them. They reviews and reuses old notes and works, transporting them to new contexts and articulating them in new ways as a kind of corrupted archive; fermenting the meaning of objects and information and thus playing with the division between memory and fiction. By starting from this process of sewing together meanings, symbols and images through procedures of analysis, fermentation and articulation they also carries out a gesture coming from its own process of trans construction: learning to decode and recode languages in order to sew.
Renata Del Riego (Mexico City, 1998) studied fine arts and anthropology at Columbia University in New York.
Her practice focuses on the relationship between matter and text, thread and word, stone and memory: what falls, hangs, drips and unravels with the passage of time. The weight of time. The passage of weight. Her work is the result of reflections on language as a sculptural material, using repetitive acts of fragmentation and reconstruction. Interested in the information contained in washed-out, decayed and broken textures, he approaches surfaces from their fragility to draw new cartographies and discover hidden languages.
Hector Llanquin (Santiago de Chile, Chile) Chilean-born artist of Mapuche ancestry who lives and works in Brooklyn. His work reflects on the material and simbolic connections between the notion of technology and the elements that constitutes it generating work in a wide range of tangible and intangible media such as Video, Music, Painting and Installations. He has exhibited his work internationally and has been collected by a variety of institutions such as Whitney Museum of Art or Espacio Byte in Argentina.
Camilo Salas (Santiago de Chile, 1983) is a Chilean Artist and Journalist who lives and works in Brooklyn. At 19 years old, he co-founded the digital publication Disorder.cl. Armed with a journalism degree, he covered various topics in his home country before relocating to the US in 2013. Since then, he has contributed to outlets like Vice, CNN, and various international publications. He now runs Pan Flute Publishing Haus, teaches at Hunter College, and is pursuing an MFA in Integrated Media Arts.
His artistic practice is informed by themes of surveillance, both historical and futuristic. Through imagery, including videos, photographs, and digitally created worlds, he explores how we interact with Artificial Intelligence and other monitoring technologies. His work has been exhibited in group shows such as “Overdrive” at the Graduate Center, “Novelty1” at Mayday Space, and “Proyecto Prismas” at Selva, New York.
Juan Pablo Mapeto (Concepción, Chile, 1985). Since his childhood, he has followed the path of art, initiating his studies in a self-taught manner, developing artistic works with various collectives, and participating in the local music scene. He moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to study visual arts at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA), where he pursued studies in painting, engraving, drawing, and sculpture. His career includes exhibitions in various countries. He won the "Mérito artístico y cultural ABCH" award for the exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Buenos Aires. Based in São Paulo, Brazil, he participated in the documentary "Exposto" and also in collective art exhibitions and art fairs, in addition to creating album covers for national and international bands. In 2021, he founded Proyeto Prismas, a project focused on documenting and bringing together artistic processes among artists. Currently, the project has held two exhibitions in São Paulo and in Mexico City, curated by Mapeto.
Among the activities carried out in recent years are participation in the Tijuana Triennial: I International Pictorial (Mexico), an individual exhibition at Galeria Gruta in São Paulo, participation in collective exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, Athens, and Mexico City. His projects are focused on a new figuration of the pictorial landscape where digital opens new spaces for reflection on the functioning of memory and its impacts.