Adriana Corral

Last updated

Adriana Corral
Born1983
El Paso, Texas
Education The University of Texas at Austin
Known forInstallation, performance, sculpture
AwardsThe Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, The MacDowell Colony Grant, and The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Grant
Website adrianacorral.com

Adriana Corral (born 1983) is an American artist born in El Paso, Texas, who focuses on installation, performance, and sculpture. Her artwork often emphasizes themes of memory, contemporary human rights violations, and under-examined historical narratives. Corral completed her B.F.A. at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2008 and her M.F.A. at the University of Texas at Austin in 2013. Her work has been exhibited at the Betty Moody Gallery, Houston, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Texas, Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Texas, the McNay Art Museum, and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. She has received a series of awards recognizing her work including The Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, The MacDowell Colony Grant, and The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Grant.

Contents

Early life and education

Adriana Corral was born in El Paso, Texas in 1983. In her 2016 presentation for U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium, Corral spoke about her early interest in art, specifically the Spanish artist Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808. According to Corral, at an early age, this piece "awakened an awareness of the vicious realities of injustices." [1] Corral's own work often focuses on the experiences of individuals who have been ignored in mainstream histories, like the victims of femicides in Ciudad Juárez and braceros who were mistreated on U.S. soil during the mid-twentieth century.

Corral's early years were also influenced by her access to her family's medical practice. In 4x4: Artist Q+A, a video series produced by Walley Films, Corral said, "I've had a deep love for medicine and for the arts as well, and I feel that they are really interlaced." [2] At an early age, her aunt encouraged her to pursue medicine as a tangible way to help people. Corral concluded that the arts, too, could help people and established a path toward a career in the arts. [2]

Corral earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Texas at El Paso in 2008 and her Master of Fine Arts from University of Texas at Austin in 2013. Today, Corral's artwork often takes up themes related to heath, such as the inhumane use of cyanide-based insecticides on guest workers entering the country to participate in the Bracero program. Corral identifies artist Teresita Fernández as a key influence on her work. [3]

Career

Residencies and awards

Corral's artwork has been recognized regionally, nationally, and internationally. She received the Roy Crane Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2013, [4] the MacDowell Colony Grant (2014), the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Grant in 2014, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 2015 and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist-in-Residence in 2018, [5] the Künstlerhaus Bethanien Residency in Berlin in 2016, International Artist-in-Residence at Artpace in 2016, and the Artadia Award in 2019. [6] Corral was invited to speak at the Ford Foundation's 2016 U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium. [1] Corral was a 2017 fellow at Black Cube, a Nomadic Art Museum, [7] during which time she produced and installed Unearthed: Desenterrado (on view March 9–June 9, 2018). [8]

Exhibitions

Corral's 2020 solo exhibition Line as Human/Línea como concepto humano was held at the Betty Moody Gallery in Houston, Texas. The title of the show was inspired by a text written in the 1960s by the artist Gego. [9] Corral's Unearthed: Desenterrado was exhibited at the Staniar Gallery at Washington and Lee University [10] and the Boulder Museum of Art, Boulder, Colorado. [11] Corral's Sous Rature: Under Erasure was exhibited in 2016 at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas. Her first major solo exhibition, Voces de las Perdidas: Voices of the Lost was held at Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin in 2011.

In 2024, her work was featured in Xican-a.o.x. Body , a comprehensive exhibition on the contributions of Chicano artists to contemporary culture at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. [12]

Corral's work has been exhibited in a variety of group exhibitions including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, New Orleans Museum of Art, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Krannert Art Museum, Three Walls Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Blue Star Contemporary, and the McNay Art Museum.

Artwork

Work focused on femicides in Ciudad Juárez (2010-2017)

While completing her M.F.A at the University of Texas at Austin, Corral began to create work about the victims of femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Femicides are classified as gender-based murders, which often involve sexual assault. Perpetrators are rarely apprehended or punished and therefore the exact number of victims is difficult to calculate. In Voces de las Perdidas (Voices of the lost) (2010), Corral produced a site-specific installation in which she hung hundreds of ceramic body bag tags that she created from soil collected at the crime site of Campo Algodonero in Cd. Juarez. On each tag, she wrote the names of individual victims in an effort to acknowledge their identities. Though the bodies of many women were abandoned at this site, the remains of eight women were identified (Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez, Claudia Ivette González, María de los Ángeles Acosta Ramírez, Mayra Juliana Reyes Solís, Merlín Elizabeth Rodríguez Sáenz, and María Rocina Galicia) and named as a part of the landmark case presented to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In her 2011 performance piece Quebrar el Silencio (Break the Silence), Corral smashed four hundred and fifty ceramic body bag tags, symbolizing the impossibility of fully reclaiming the voices of the victims of femicide. [13]

Corral pursued notions of silence surrounding the murders of women in several other bodies of work produced between 2010 and 2017, including Campo Algodón, Ciudad Juarez, 21 de Febrero del 2007 (2011), Per Legem Terrae (2014), Impunidad, Circulo Vicioso (2015) Sous Rature, 'Under Erasure' (2016), and The Trace of a Living Document (2017).

Unearthed: Desenterrado (2018)

Corral's monumental flag Unearthed: Desenterrado was installed along the U.S./Mexico border at the Rio Vista Farm in Socorro, Texas, which is the site of a former Bracero program processing center. An all-cotton white flag flew on a 60-foot-high flag pole over the site for three months, which is the life expectancy of cotton flags. An American bald eagle and a Mexican golden eagle (designed by Corral's collaborator Vincent Valdez) are embroidered on opposite sides of the flag, symbolizing the fraught bi-national Bracero Agreement (1942), the largest foreign guest worker program ever established at that time. In her artist statement, Corral states that the work commemorates the Mexican men who worked on U.S. farms and built its railroads, while also acknowledging human rights violations against the workers. At processing centers like Rio Vista, braceros were doused in dangerous chemicals including cyanide-based chemicals and kerosene as part of a delousing process meant to stop the spread of smallpox. Corral contends, "Framing the process as 'cleasing' justified the use of pesticides through science and medicine." [14] Corral collaborated with a number of scholars to create the piece, including historians David Dorado Romo, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, and Sehila Mota Casper.

Subject to the Texas sun and wind, the flag slowly deteriorated over time. The exhibition was curated by Cortney Lane Stell for Black Cube a Nomadic Art Museum. [15] In her essay for the Staniar Gallery catalogue Adriana Corral's Unearthed: Desenterrado, Stell notes that the cotton references the fields around the Rio Vista Farm, where cotton was grown and harvested by braceros. According to Stell, the unravelling of the flag was a "metaphor for both the fragility of the human body and the transience of memory, referencing the harsh treatment of braceros at Rio Vista Farm and their forgotten history." [16] After its original installation in Socorro, Texas, Unearthed: Desenterrado was exhibited at the Staniar Gallery at Washington and Lee University [10] and the Boulder Museum of Art, Boulder, Colorado. [11]

Requiem (2016-2018)

Part of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Suffering from Realness, Requiem consists of a monumental bronze representation of a dying golden eagle. The piece was a site-specific collaboration with the artist Vincent Valdez. According to Denise Markonish, who curated Suffering from Realness, "A requiem is a mass for the souls of the dead, and here Corral and Valdez have used it to take stock of American History, beginning by asking 243 Americans (a number marking the age of the American Republic in 2019) to each submit a date of personal or historical significance. These dates were burned by Corral, and the ash was used by Valdez to patina a bronze sculpture of an American bald eagle in distress. Each of the collected dates was then laboriously cut and carved directly into the sheetrock wall by Corral, literally scarring the museum with American history, creating both an urn and a time capsule." [17] Each of the 243 participants also submitted explanatory texts, which were all exhibited in a key alongside the wall. [18] Together, the texts combined to create a people's history of the United States. Other dates with significance to the artists are also included in the key. For example, "242. April 4, 2019: Requiem completed, a three-year project."

The bronze eagle and 243 dates were exhibited alongside Valdez's The Beginning is Near, Part II:Dream Baby Dream (2018). When the exhibition opened, Valdez and Corral organized a performance in which pall bearers processed Requiem to its installation site while a mariachi band (with Valdez on trumpet) accompanied the procession. [19]

Eyes of the Skin, Lehmann Maupin (2022)

Corrals's work was included in Eyes of the Skin, a group exhibition mounted between June 9 – August 12, 2022 at Lehmann Maupin. The exhibition was curated by New York City-based artist Teresita Fernández, who was represented by Lehmann Maupin at the time. According to the exhibition website, the show was aimed toward "pushing back against the dominance of the eye and the biased hierarchies of visual art history." Instead, the exhibition was intended to focus on "the role of the body as the locus of perception" and emphasized "the importance of indigenous, intuitive, and somatic knowledge as a primary source for understanding our world." [20] The gallery produced a "microsite" to provide additional information and to archive the exhibition. About Corral's work, the site reveals that her work entitled A Pamplisest (2022) on view (a series of six panels, ink, lithographic crayon, pen, and NARA documents transferred onto gesso board panels [21] ), reveals the "political targeting of Mexican immigrants as contagious carriers for disease and the subsequent creation of an atmosphere of racialized paranoia in California, Texas, and the Southwest—a sentiment that public officials capitalized on to implement harsher border-control policies." [22] In this group show, Corral's work was exhibited alongside works by Francheska Alcántara, Carolina Caycedo, David Antonio Cruz, Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Leslie Martinez, Glendalys Medina, and Jeffrey Meris, and Esteban Ramón Pérez.


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirazeh Houshiary</span> Iranian installation artist and sculptor

Shirazeh Houshiary is an Iranian-born English sculptor, installation artist, and painter. She lives and works in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Betty Woodman</span> American ceramic artist

Elizabeth Woodman was an American ceramic artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Pootoogook</span> Canadian Inuk artist

Annie Pootoogook was a Canadian Inuk artist known for her pen and coloured pencil drawings. In her art, Pootoogook often portrayed the experiences of those in her community of Kinngait, in northern Canada, and memories and events from her own life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melanie Yazzie</span> Navajo artist

Melanie A. Yazzie is a Navajo sculptor, painter, printmaker, and professor. She teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Steinkamp</span> American installation artist (born 1958)

Jennifer Steinkamp is an American installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception.

Mr. is a Japanese contemporary artist, based in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. A former protégé of Takashi Murakami, Mr.'s work debuted in both solo and group exhibitions in 1996, and has since been seen in museum and gallery exhibitions in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hong Kong, Seoul, Daegu, Paris, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and London.

Suling Wang is an internationally recognized painter and contemporary artist, known predominantly for her large scale abstract works. She currently lives and works in London, UK and Taichung, Taiwan.

Adriana Varejão is a Brazilian artist. She works in various disciplines including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and photography. She was an artist-in-resident at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2004. Varejão lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liza Lou</span> American visual artist (born 1969)

Liza Lou is an American visual artist. She is best known for producing large scale sculpture using glass beads. Lou ran a studio in Durban, South Africa from 2005 to 2014. She currently has a nomadic practice, working mostly outdoors in the Mojave Desert in southern California. Lou's work is grounded in domestic craft and intersects with the larger social economy.

The Museo Alameda was the largest Latino museum in the United States and the first formal Smithsonian affiliate outside of Washington D.C., located in the historic Market Square in Downtown San Antonio, Texas.

Angel Otero was born 1981. He is a contemporary visual artist specializing in painting.

Helen Pashgian is an American visual artist who lives and works in Pasadena, California. She is a primary member of the Light and Space art movement of the 1960s, but her role has been historically under-recognized.

Adriana Farmiga is an American visual artist, curator, and professor based in New York City. She serves as a programming advisor for the non-profit La Mama Gallery in the East Village, and is the current Associate Dean at Cooper Union School of Art. In June of 2024 Farmiga was promoted Dean at Cooper Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeon Joonho</span> South Korean artist (born 1969)

Jeon Joonho is a South Korean artist.

Yumi Janairo Roth is a Colorado-based visual artist who is known for her sculptures and site-responsive projects that explore themes of hybridity, immigration, and displacement. Working in diverse media, Roth's practice elevates the mundane, honors international craft techniques, and empowers the interloper to navigate unfamiliar places. Roth is an associate professor of Sculpture and Post-Studio Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Vincent Valdez is an American artist born in San Antonio, Texas, who focuses on painting, drawing, and printmaking. His artwork often emphasizes themes of social justice, memory, and ignored or under-examined historical narratives. Valdez completed his B.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000. He lives and works in Houston, Texas, and is represented by the David Shelton Gallery (Houston) and Matthew Brown Gallery. Valdez's work has been exhibited at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Ford Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Blanton Museum of Art, Parsons School of Design, and the Fundacion Osde Buenos Aires.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Radstone</span> British ceramic artist and lecturer

Sara Radstone is a British ceramic artist and lecturer. Her work ranges from intimate wall based sculpture to large scale installations of multiple elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nyeema Morgan</span> American visual artist

Nyeema Morgan is an American interdisciplinary and conceptual artist. Working in drawing, sculpture and print media, her works focus on how meaning is constructed and communicated given complex socio-political systems. Born in Philadelphia, she earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and her MFA from the California College of the Arts. She has held artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Smack Mellon. Morgan's works are in the permanent collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Menil Collection.

Tina Havelock Stevens is an Australian multi disciplinary artist known for her drumming, documentaries, and video works. She often combines improvised live music performances with striking locations that explore the spirituality of place.

Esteban Ramón Pérez is an American artist who produces multi-media paintings and sculptures. His sociopolitical artwork often emphasizes subjective memory, spirituality, and fragmented history. Pérez earned a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2017 and an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, in 2019. Pérez's work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut; Eastern Connecticut State University Art Gallery, Windham, Connecticut; Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn; James Cohan Gallery, New York; Gamma Galería, Guadalajara, Mexico; Calderón, New York; the Arlington Arts Center, Virginia; Charles Moffett, New York; and Lehmann Maupin, New York. Solo exhibitions include Staniar Gallery, Lexington, Virginia. Pérez was selected for the NXTHVN Fellowship Program and is a 2022 recipient of the Artadia Award. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

References

  1. 1 2 "U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium - Adriana Corral - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Films, Walley (September 25, 2018), 4x4: Adriana Corral - Why Are You an Artist? , retrieved January 6, 2021
  3. ↑ Films, Walley (January 9, 2019), 4×4: Adriana Corral – Who has influenced your work? , retrieved January 6, 2021
  4. ↑ "UTA -- Exhibitions at The Gallery". www.uta.edu. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Adriana Corral". Joan Mitchell Foundation. February 15, 2017. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  6. ↑ "Adriana Corral". Artadia. January 8, 2020. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  7. ↑ "Adriana Corral". Black Cube. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  8. ↑ "Unearthed: Desenterrado". Black Cube. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  9. ↑ "ADRIANA CORRAL: LINE AS HUMAN / LA LINEA COMO CONCEPTO HUMANO". Glasstire. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  10. 1 2 Ostrom, Reid; Ricks, James; Salchert, David; Lepage, Andrea (June 25, 2019). "Leaving a Trace". The Columns. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  11. 1 2 "Adriana Corral: Unearthed/Desenterrado – Fall – Exhibitions". BMoCA – Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  12. ↑ "Xican-a.o.x. Body • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  13. ↑ Vargas-Santiago, Luis; Dulitzky, Ariel (2015). Counter-Archives to the Narco-City. Copilot Press. ISBN   978-0982144848.
  14. ↑ Corral, Adriana (2019). "Artist's Statement" in Adriana Corral's Unearthed: Desenterrado. Lexington, VA: Staniar Gallery. p. 5. ISBN   978-0-578-45813-7.
  15. ↑ Boyd, Kealey (March 5, 2018). "Commemorating US-Mexico Collaboration on a Farm Where Guest Workers Toiled". Hyperallergic. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  16. ↑ Stell, Cortney Lane (2019). "Adriana Corral's Unearthed: Desenterrado A Site Specific Artwork at the United States-Mexico Border," in Adriana Corral's Unearthed: Desenterrado. Lexington, VA: Staniar Gallery. p. 40. ISBN   978-0-578-45813-7.
  17. ↑ Markonish, Denise. "Suffering from Realness Gallery Guide" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 25, 2020.
  18. ↑ Markonish, Denise (2019). Suffering from Realness. Prestel. pp. 110–111. ISBN   978-3791358192.
  19. ↑ "A Wake-Up Call at MASS MoCA: Suffering from Realness". The Greylock Glass. May 6, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
  20. ↑ "Eyes of the Skin - Curated by artist Teresita Fernández - Exhibitions - Lehmann Maupin". www.lehmannmaupin.com. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  21. ↑ Diehl, Travis; Smith, Roberta; Farago, Jason; Heinrich, Will (October 5, 2022). "What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries Right Now". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  22. ↑ "Adriana Corral - - Art - Lehmann Maupin". www.lehmannmaupin.com. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.