Guggenheim Latin American Circle Presents Performances on May 5
May 5, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
On May 5, three performance works will be presented in the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda.
First Public Presentation in the United States of Three Recently Acquired Artworks by OPAVIVIRÁ!, Amalia Pica, and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa
Tickets are $15, $10 for members, and $8 for students and can be purchased by calling the Box Office at 212 423 3587 or visiting guggenheim.org/publicprograms. Support for the performance is provided by Guggenheim Latin American Circle members Ximena Caminos and Alan Faena, Catherine Petitgas, and Camila Sol de Pool.
(NEW YORK, NY—April 25, 2017)—On Friday, May 5, the Guggenheim Museum introduces three recently acquired artworks performed for the first time in the United States by Rio de Janeiro-based collective OPAVIVARÁ!, Amalia Pica (b. 1978, Neuquén, Argentina), and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (b.1978, Guatemala City). The evening marks the first public event organized by the museum’s recently formed Latin American Circle, a group of art patrons and collectors dedicated to raising awareness and support for museum public programs, acquisitions, and exhibitions, with a focus on contemporary Latin American art. Latin American Circle Presents: An Evening of Performance is organized by curator Pablo León de la Barra with Amara Antilla, Assistant Curator.
Furthering its mission of collecting, preserving, and interpreting the art of our time in a global context, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has presented several exhibitions of Latin American art in recent years, including Doris Salcedo (2015) and Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms (2012–13), and produced Sanatorium by Pedro Reyes (2012). Through the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, a distinctive program that creates direct access to contemporary art and education on a global scale via in-depth collaboration with artists, curators, and cultural organizations from three regions including Latin America, the Guggenheim increased its holdings of Latin American art by twenty percent and appointed Pablo León de la Barra as Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America. Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today (2014–16), presented in New York, Mexico City, and London as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Initiative, featured more than fifty new works added to the collection.
Since the 1960s, the Guggenheim Museum has presented numerous performances in the rotunda by artists including Marina Abramović, Philip Glass, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Joan Jonas, Meredith Monk, and John Zorn as well as performance-based exhibitions and installations by Matthew Barney and Tino Sehgal. Recognizing performance and time-based media as an essential aspect of art practice, and the issues it raises—regarding duration and ephemerality, the role of the document and the function of memory, the value of labor and the significance of personal interaction— the Guggenheim remains committed to the process of acquiring, maintaining and displaying ephemeral, durational works of art.
Latin American Circle Presents: An Evening of Performance at the Guggenheim
Amalia Pica’s Asamble (2015) takes the form of a procession involving more than two dozen participants—the circular form of which evokes a universal emblem of assembly—and explores the challenges of democratic communication. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s A Brief History of Architecture in Guatemala (Breve Historia de la Arquitectura en Guatemala, 2010) is a dance performed in costumes modeled after iconic Mesoamerican building typologies—a Mayan pyramid, a colonial church, a modernist block—and examines the tendency of architecture to memorialize regimes of power and exploitation. In Kitchen Drumming(Batuque na cozinha, 2013/17) by OPAVIVARÁ!, basic kitchen tools mounted to the body become percussive instruments in a performance that fuses celebration and protest by evoking carnival parades, marching bands, and anti-government demonstrations.
A reception and private view of the current exhibitions Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim and The Hugo Boss Prize 2016: Anicka Yi, Life is Cheap will follow.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Founded in 2005 in Rio de Janeiro, OPAVIVARÁ! is an artist collective comprised of four members, who all received BFA degrees from the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, Rio de Janeiro. The collective has participated in group exhibitions including Ecologica, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2010); O Abrigo e o Torreno, Museu de Arte do Rio (2013); Acción Urgente, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires; the Taipei Biennial (both 2014); Havana Biennial; The City Is Ours, the Body Is Mine: Urban Spatial Practices in Contemporary Latin America, James Gallery, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (both 2015); the São Paulo Biennial; Projeto Brasil/The Sky Is Already Falling, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; Transnomaden, Künstlerhaus, Frankfurt (all 2016). All the members of OPAVIVARÁ! live and work in Rio de Janeiro.
Amalia Pica was born in 1978 in Neuquén, Argentina. She moved to Buenos Aires to study at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes P. Pueyrredón, completing her undergraduate degree in 2001. Pica has had solo exhibitions at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2010); University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2011); Modern Art Oxford; Chisenhale Gallery, London; and Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland (all 2012); and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Neuquén, Argentina (all 2013); Van Abbemuseum, the Netherlands (2014); and Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany (2016). She has participated in group exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (2011, 2015); The Ungovernables: New Museum Triennial, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2012); Adventures of the Black Square, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (both 2015); and Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2016). Pica received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 2011. She lives and works in London.
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa was born in 1978 in Guatemala City, receiving a BFA in Media Arts from Emily Carr University, Vancouver, in 2006, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. He was a postgraduate researcher at Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 2013. Ramírez-Figueroa has had solo exhibitions at Casa de América, Madrid (2011), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2011), and Gasworks, London (2015). He has participated in group exhibitions including A History of Interventions, Tate Modern, London; Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (both 2014); The School of Nature and Principle, EFA Project Space, New York; BMW Tate Live: Performance Room, Tate Modern, London (all 2015); São Paulo Biennial (both 2016); and Venice Biennale (2017). He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2012), a DAAD fellowship (2015–16) and the 2017 Mies van der Rohe Award. Ramirez-Figueroa lives and works in Berlin and Guatemala City.
ABOUT THE LATIN AMERICAN CIRCLE
Formed in 2016, the Latin American Circle, co-chaired by Clarissa Bronfman and Rudy Weissenberg, is a dynamic group of art collectors actively involved in contemporary art and culture in Latin America. Dedicated to advising on and advocating for the Guggenheim’s Latin American contemporary art initiatives, the group works closely with curator Pablo León de la Barra to facilitate the museum’s ongoing efforts to diversify and strengthen its programming and collection through both emerging and established artists from Latin America.
ABOUT THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION
Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The Guggenheim network that began in the 1970s when the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, was joined by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, has since expanded to include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (opened 1997) and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (currently in development). The Guggenheim Foundation continues to forge international collaborations that celebrate contemporary art, architecture, and design within and beyond the walls of the museum, including the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. More information about the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation can be found at guggenheim.org.
