Karina Aguilera Skvirsky | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American/Ecuadorian |
Education | Oberlin College (BA) Indiana University (MFA) |
Known for | Performance, photography, video |
Notable work | The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios (2019) |
Awards | Creative Capital Award (2019) NALAC Visual Arts Grant (2018) Jerome Foundation NYC Film & Media Grant (2015) |
Website | http://www.karinaskvirsky.com |
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York, New York. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum, among others. [1] Working across video, performance, and photography, Aguilera Skvirsky addresses themes of migration, colonization, Latin American identity, and family history. Aguilera Skvirsky is best known for her performance video The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios (2019).
Aguilera Skvirsky was born in Providence, RI to an Ecuadorian mother and a father of Eastern European Jewish descent. As a child, she lived between the Eastern United States and Guayaquil, Ecuador, where her mother was born. Skvirsky has said that the contrast between her memories of Ecuador and her life in the United States was central to her artistic practice.
Aguilera Skvirsky received her Bachelor's degree in Spanish literature from Oberlin College. In 1996, she received an MFA in Photography from Indiana University.
Aguilera Skvirsky's best known work is The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios, a 30-minute-long video which documents a performance the artist did in 2019. In it, Aguilera Skvirsky retraces the overland journey of her great-grandmother, an Afro-Ecuadorian domestic who travelled to Guayaquil in 1906 before the railroad was completed in 1908. The video was shown in Impermanence: XIII Cuenca Biennial, curated by Dan Cameron, in 2016 and subsequently at Smack Mellon in New York. [2] [3] In 2020, the work was featured in a solo exhibition at Galería Vigil Gonzales, Sacred Valley, Peru. [4]
In 2011, Aguilera Skvirsky participated in a residency at the Laundromat Project in which she collected oral histories of downtown Jersey City through a local laundromat. [5]
In 2017, Aguilera Skvirsky had a solo exhibition entitled The Folds in the Photograph/Los pliegues en la foto at DPM Gallery in Guayaquil, Ecuador. [6]
In 2019, Aguilera Skvirsky received an award from Creative Capital to support the production of a performance-documentary entitled How to build a wall and other ruins as well as Sacred Geometry, a series of photographic collages. [7] These works explore the symbolic power of stone in Inka and Cañari cultures in Ecuador through the ruin site of Ingapirca and contemporary discourse about Latin American colonization and archaeology. How to build a wall and other ruins premiered at the XV Cuenca Biennial, curated by Blanca de la Torre, in Ecuador in late 2021. [8]
A selection of other exhibitions of Aguilera Skvirsky's work includes:
Theo Constanté Parra was a master Latin American painter part of the Abstract Informalist Movement in Ecuador. In 2005, Constanté won the country's most prestigious award for art, literature and culture, the Premio Eugenio Espejo National Award, presented by the President of Ecuador. Constanté's works are abstract in nature and consist of many colors which meld together amongst loosely drawn geometric lines. Constanté stated that his favorite colors were red, orange and blue and they are the colors that are typically more dominant in his work.
Luis Enrique Tábara was a master Ecuadorian painter and teacher representing a whole Hispanic pictorial and artistic culture.
Aníbal Villacís was a master painter from Ecuador who used raw earthen materials such as clay and natural pigments to paint on walls and doors throughout his city when he could not afford expensive artist materials. As a teenager, Villacís taught himself drawing and composition by studying and recreating the illustrated ad posters for bullfights in Quito. In 1952, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, former President of Ecuador, discovered Villacís and offered him a scholarship to study in Paris.
Estuardo Maldonado is an Ecuadorian sculptor and painter inspired by the Constructivist movement. Maldonado is a member of VAN, the group of Informalist painters founded by Enrique Tábara. Other members of VAN included, Aníbal Villacís, Luis Molinari, Hugo Cifuentes, León Ricaurte and Gilberto Almeida. Maldonado's international presence is largely due to his participation in over a hundred exhibits outside of Ecuador.
Jorge Velarde is a Contemporary Latin American painter from Ecuador. Velarde has been drawing and painting since he was a child. At the age of 15 Velarde knew that he was meant to be a painter.
Marcos Restrepo Restrepo is a Latin American painter who is a member of the artist group Artefactoría, founded by Xavier Patiño. Artefactoría was formed in 1982 by a group of painters from the School of Fine Arts in Guayaquil who are inspired by the surrealists and the unconscious. Members of Artefactoria include: Restrepo, Xavier Patiño, Jorge Velarde, Pedro Dávila, Marco Alvarado, Flavio Álava, Paco Cuesta
Rodolfo Abularach was a Guatemalan painter and printmaker of Palestinian descent.
Xavier Blum Pinto is an Ecuadorian artist. From 1974 to 1976 he studied architecture at the Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil, in Ecuador. In 1981, obtained his MA in Fine Arts from the Universitė of Paris VIII, France.
María de Mater O'Neill is a Puerto Rican artist, designer and educator.
Darío Escobar is a Guatemalan artist.
Saidel Brito is a prominent Cuban artist specializing in drawing, sculpture, installation and photography.
José Sánchez Iraola is a contemporary painter.
Rubén Torres Llorca is a Cuban artist specializing in painting, drawing, sculpture, collages, and photography. He studied from 1972 to 1976 at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro" in Havana and from 1976 to 1981, studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), also in Havana. Torres resided in Mexico City, Mexico, from 1990 to 1993 and has resided in Miami, Florida, since 1993.
Eduardo X Arroyo is an Ecuadorian painter.
The history of the Republic of Ecuador from 1830 to 1860 begins with the collapse of the nation of Gran Colombia in 1830, followed by the assassination of Antonio José de Sucre and the death of Simón Bolívar from tuberculosis the same year. Heartbroken at the dissolution of Gran Colombia, Bolívar is quoted to have said shortly before his death, "America is ungovernable. Those who have served the revolution have plowed the sea." These words would seem prophetic during the chaotic first thirty years of Ecuador's existence.
Gastón Ugalde is considered the father of contemporary bolivian art and was the recipient of the prestigious Konex Award in 2002 along with Oscar Niemeyer. Ugalde was named "the most important living Bolivian artist" by the Konex Foundation in Argentina and was also referred to as the "Andean Warhol" by art critics. Ugalde was also known as "the enfant terrible" of the Bolivian Art Scene.
Víctor Vázquez is a photographer and a contemporary conceptual artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Víctor Vázquez has been working as an artist for more than 20 years, creating photographs, three-dimensional objects, videos and installation works in which the human body figures both conceptually and formally. Vázquez offers a series of semiotic constructs that navigate identity, ritual, politics and anthropological inquiry. Themes include the duality of language and meaning and the relationships between nature and culture. He was an artist in resident at Cuerpos Pintados, Fundacion America in Santiago, Chile, in the year of 2002 and at Proyecto ´ace Art Center in Buenos Aires in the year 2006.
Gilberto Almeida Egas was an Ecuadorian painter born in San Antonio de Ibarra, in Imbabura Province. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Quito from 1953 to 1957. His early work was in many media, especially paintings of buildings and views in old Quito; his later work concentrated on large black-and-white drawings, in a baroque, expressionistic, and dramatic style.
Tomás Parrá is a Mexican artist, cultural promoter and museum curator. His work has been noted with membership into Mexico Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.
Rogelio Polesello was an Argentine painter, muralist and sculptor. He was best known for making Op art known in Latin America. He won two Konex Awards; one in 1982 and another in 2012. He was born in Buenos Aires.