ENTRECUERPOS
October 31st - December 6th
Curated by: Juan Arango Palacios and Moises Salazar
Artists: Vani Aguilar, Juan Arango Palacios, Haylie Jimenez, Sydnie Jimenez, Moises Salazar
Open to the public on September 19th (mask required)
On view during gallery hours: Friday/Saturday 1-6PM, Sunday 1-5PM
ENTRECUERPOS explores the complexity that is generated by the layering of intersectional identities within a diasporic experience. Coming from varying latinx backgrounds, including Mexican, Chicanx, Dominican, and Colombian origins, these artists are using their cultural pasts to claim an identity in a space where their existence is usually marginalized. Growing up in the United States, these artists respond to their cultural distancing to re-contextualize the concept of home by the representation of figures in fantastical and idealized environments. Safety and self-preservation become driving forces used by the artists as methods of resistance to the actuality of the artist’s lives and social status. Each artist challenges their relationship with the art historical perception of the figure to broaden and defy social assumptions about queerness, femme identity, masculine identity, brownness, and migratory status through their use and interpretation of material. The objects in the exhibition will include screen-prints by Haylie Jimenez, Ceramic sculpture by Sydnie Jimenez, and paintings by Vani Aguilar, Juan Arango Palacios, and Moises Salazar.
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Vani Aguilar was born in Southern California to their immigrant father, who migrated from Mexico in 1986, and their Chicana mother. Vani lived in full submergence of Mexican and Chicanx culture up until 2016 when they moved to Illinois to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This geographical shift instilled a sense of hyper awareness in Vani about their cultural specificity in relation to Mexican American people across the country, and a sense of misunderstanding from people outside of West Coast Chicanx community. Their work considers misdirected ideologies around Chicanxs identities, their own sentiment, understanding of their culture to propose how negative ideas of those mannerisms fall short of viewing the purposeful tactics of survival within this community.
Instagram: @_muneco
Juan Arango Palacios was born in Pereira, Colombia, and was raised in a traditional Catholic home. Their traditional upbringing was cut short by a series of migrations that their family took seeking a better future. The family moved from Colombia to southern Louisiana where Juan’s sense of identity and belonging began to be skewed by their lack of knowledge of the English language, their unfamiliarity with American culture, and their internal struggle with a queer identity. Living in other parts of Louisiana and Texas, and being further subdued by the conservative culture in which they lived, Juan continued to live with a constant fear of their own identity throughout their youth. Juan currently studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has found a safe-haven within the queer community in Chicago.
Instagram: @juuuanitx
(Haylie Jimenez) Growing up in a majority white, lower income town in north Georgia as a visibly brown, queer, femme, centering brown and black femmes and the communities we are a part of is of the upmost importance in my work. I'm interested in depicting my own version of these experiences through work that stems from stylized drawings. Depicting physical experiences like friends/family hanging out at a barbecue as wells as representing emotional or nonphysical experiences with metaphorical landscapes and actions is important documentation of not only my own experiences but also those of my peers and fellow black and brown folks. Through my own stylized drawings, these act as thorough physical and nonphysical documentation, capturing certain emotions and moods through exaggeration that drawing allows (exaggerated colors, features, expressions, spaces, etc). For me, this documentation is important to show the multiplicities that black and brown folks with varying intersectional identities are allowed to experience; that we are not just pigeon holed into a certain role or idea; that we can experience sorrow, pain, and joy all at the same time, and often together. For me, animation brings another nuance to these experiences as well, adding the element of time and a digital lens. Animation speaks to a certain experience and certain influences (such as video games and anime/cartoons) that many poor black and brown folks grew up with perhaps as a way of escapism and alternative narratives. Short Film and animation also speaks to a certain accessibility that I am interested in, particularly those that are accessible on the internet. The internet has been a point of entry for many isolated black, brown, and queer folks to find each other and for many, the first place for genuine acceptance and creativity.
Instagram: @_h4yli3
Sydnie Jimenez, born to Roberto Jimenez and Tiffany Kroksey in Orlando, Florida, spent half of her childhood here and continued the rest of her childhood in north Georgia. This cultural and geographical change while also being raised by a single mother added to the massive cognitive dissonance she was already experiencing due to growing up with mostly the white American side of her family as a non white-presenting person and only being reunited with the Dominican side of her family when in middle school and finally accepting her brownness. Most of her work is inadvertently informed by this feeling of cultural dysphoria and the need to represent racially ambiguous brown characters to invoke a sense of familiarity and security within community while expressing a suspicion, frustration, and/or anger towards societal ideals rooted in white supremacy and European colonization. She moved to Chicago in 2016, another dramatic cultural change, and is currently working within these themes in her ceramic-heavy practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Instagram: @syddd.viciouss
Moises Salazar was born and raised on the southwest side of Chicago Illinois. They currently are based in Chicago and attend the School of the Art Institute, Undergraduate Program. Being Queer and born to immigrant parents has cemented a conflict within Moises Salazar’s political identity which is the conceptual focus of their practice. The work of Moises Salazar is meant to showcase the trauma, history, and current state that undocumented immigrants and queer folk find themselves in. It is by examining the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, nationality and the United States history that Moises Salazar addresses the reality of the barriers that immigrants and queer folk face with the intention to begin to dismantle the myths and stereotypes used to criminalize and dehumanize them.
Instagram: @moises.salazar.tlatenchi