Kukuli Velarde

Last updated
Kukuli Velarde
Born(1962-11-29)November 29, 1962
Cusco, Peru
EducationBachelor of Fine Arts from Hunter College (New York)
Known forCeramics
Website kukulivelarde.com

Kukuli Velarde (born November 29, 1962) [1] is a Peruvian artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She specializes in painting and ceramic sculptures made out of clay and terra-cotta. Velarde focuses on the themes of gender and the repercussions of colonization on Latin American history, with a particular interest in Peru. [2] Her ceramics consist of unusual body positions, childlike faces, and works that have been molded from her own face as well. [2]

Contents

Biography

Kukuli Velarde was born in Cusco, Peru, to journalist parents who held high expectations for her. [2] At a young age, Velarde started to express herself through art, particularly painting, even getting to the point of being recognized as a sensation because of her advanced skills. [3] Though recognized as a talented painter, Velarde felt pressure to continue doing art, which led to her having a fallout with her craft. [2]

During 1984, Velarde lived in Mexico and attended the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, allowing her to reconnect with art. [4] In 1988, she headed to the United States, [5] where she continued her artwork by creating ceramic sculptures and received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from Hunter College in New York. [1]

Career

Velarde primarily uses clay to create sculptures with pre-Columbian inspiration. Mainly using red clay, Velarde creates ceramics that depict Pre-Columbian times and the aftermath of colonization. Velarde in a way is sticking to her Peruvian roots. [2] Velarde also chooses to use clay for her work because of the personal connection she feels to it, since red clay is known to have been traditionally used in Pre-Columbian Peru. In the beginning of Velarde's ceramics journey, she makes connections to her travels in Peru and recognizes the red clay that she had seen in pottery of South American countries. She explains that when she discovered this medium ”It was like magic; it was amazing! I felt like a mute who suddenly found her voice!” [6] [7]

Artwork

Santa Chingada: The Perfect Little Woman (1999-2000) by Kukuli Velarde at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC in 2022 Santa Chingada, The Perfect Little Woman 1999-2000.jpeg
Santa Chingada: The Perfect Little Woman (1999–2000) by Kukuli Velarde at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC in 2022

We, The Colonized Ones

From 1990 to 1992, Velarde worked on and exhibited her series We, The Colonized Ones in New York. [1] For the collection Velarde used red and white clay ceramics, which scholar Fernando Torres Quirós stated was meant to convey the emotions of the indigenous under the domination of Europeans. [3] He further stated that Velarde paid special attention in portraying the pain of her ancestors by focusing on facial features. [3] Velarde further describes in a 1996 interview that “if it's true that spirits exist, some of those millions of people might inhabit these sculptures. They are like a summoning of those ancestors I don't know, whose languages I don't speak”. [6] Per Ivor Miller, traditional methods of ceramics, such as unglazed sculptures, are incorporated into this series, purposely showing a disconnection to Western methods. [1] Velarde's work is influenced by what she explains in the 1996 interview as Indigenous aesthetics. Indigenous aesthetics are portrayed after colonization occurred and Indians in Peru were forced to wear Spanish style clothes. Over time, Indians had altered the Spanish clothing to fit their own Indigenous aesthetics showing the resilience of Indigenous peoples and how they were able to preserve parts of their culture. [6] The series also includes short performances and installations, the former of which includes Velarde utilizing her ceramics and herself to show a story of colonization in Peruvian history. [1]

Plunder Me Baby

Plunder Me Baby (2007), [8] a series of ceramic sculptures, is one of Velarde's works that has been shown in different exhibitions throughout the United States and Peru. The American Museum of Ceramic Art, explains Velarde's inspiration for this show as a childhood memory where her nanny denied her indigenous roots by claiming she couldn't speak the Inca language Quechua, [5] which later prompted her to create sculptures as a way to address the discrimination indigenous people face. [5] Art editor Janet Koplos, describes the series as consisting of brown, red, and white clay or terra-cotta, painted over with geometric shapes while portraying contorted bodies with detailed human like faces molded from the artist's own face. [8]  Visual arts editor Leah Ollman, adds that the whimsical facial expressions of the sculptures also portray a comedic feel, meant to depict Velarde's satire take on Latin American colonization. [9] This series is also a commentary on women's bodies and female sexuality by displaying female body parts. [8]

The Complicit Eye

Velarde's work, The Complicit Eye, displayed at the arts organization Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia, PA (November 2018 to February 2019), was the artist's first solo painting show in the U.S. [10] The Complicit Eye considers the female body and beauty standards in terms of patriarchal society through self portraits from the last 14 years. [11] Taller Puertorriqueño explains how the exhibition comments on society's definition of femininity and its relation to Latina bodies, specifically in Western culture where Latin American women are expected to look a certain way. [12] Paintings included show female bodies with different ideas of femininity, such as "pin up" style and "goddess" like features that show sculpted legs and exaggerated breast size, with the face of the artist attached. [10]

Exhibitions

Velarde has participated in a large number of solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States and internationally. Her solo shows include HOMAGE TO MY HEART (1996), University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; ISICHAPUITU (1998, 2001), originating at Clay Studio, Philadelphia; PATRIMONIO (2010, 2012), originating at Barry Friedman Gallery, New York; KUKULI VELARDE (2017), Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; and CORPUS (2022), originating at South West School of Art, San Antonio, Texas. [13]

Notable works in public collections

Awards

She has been awarded First Place from the Virginia Groot Foundation in 2023. On 2000 Velarde received an Anonymous Was A Woman Award for sculpture and installation. [19] In 2009 received a United States Artists Fellowship. [20] Velarde is one of the 2015 recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship, given out by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for her excellence in the fine arts. [21] She was also the Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellowship recipient (1997–1998). [22] This fellowship allowed Velarde studio space in The Clay Studio in Philadelphia and a solo exhibition. Here she displayed her exhibition Isichapuitu, which consisted of Pre-Columbian inspired ceramic pieces that told an old Peruvian folk tale about the resurrection of a female spirit. [22]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ceramics of Indigenous peoples of the Americas</span> Pottery produced by Indigenous people of the Americas

Ceramics of Indigenous peoples of the Americas is an art form with at least a 7500-year history in the Americas. Pottery is fired ceramics with clay as a component. Ceramics are used for utilitarian cooking vessels, serving and storage vessels, pipes, funerary urns, censers, musical instruments, ceremonial items, masks, toys, sculptures, and a myriad of other art forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Voulkos</span> American artist (1924 - 2002)

Peter Voulkos was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art. He established the ceramics department at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and at UC Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pre-Columbian art</span> Art of the Pre-Columbian civilizations

Pre-Columbian art refers to the visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, North, Central, and South Americas from at least 13,000 BCE to the European conquests starting in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era continued for a time after these in many places, or had a transitional phase afterwards. Many types of perishable artifacts that were once very common, such as woven textiles, typically have not been preserved, but Precolumbian monumental sculpture, metalwork in gold, pottery, and painting on ceramics, walls, and rocks have survived more frequently.

Joan Takayama-Ogawa is a sansei (third-generation) Japanese-American ceramic artist and currently professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Takayama-Ogawa's heritage since the 15th century of Japanese ceramic art influences her work, that usually explores beauty, decoration, ornamentation and narrative while also introducing a dialogue that rejects the traditional role of women in Japanese culture. Her most recent work addresses issues like climate change.

Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator whose oeuvre spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She is noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and has played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts. Takaezu was known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects. Instead she explored clay's potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts in a manner that places her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.

Adrian Saxe is an American ceramic artist who was born in Glendale, California in 1943. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arnold Zimmerman</span> American sculptor

Arnold Zimmerman (1954-2021), also known as Arnie Zimmerman, was an American sculptor and ceramic artist. His work ranged from monumental to miniature, and abstract to figurative, encompassing totemic vessel forms, tabletop sculpture and figures, murals, and room-size installations. He was part of a multi-decade, 20th-century shift in American ceramics during which artists challenged clay's identification with function and craft, engaging fine-art domains such as emotional expression, social commentary, figuration and narrative. Zimmerman first gained recognition in the 1980s for deeply carved, architectonic sculptures characterized by rough physicality, rhythmic surfaces, gestural presence and Italian Romanesque influences. In the mid-1990s, he shifted to figurative work that critic Donald Kuspit wrote, examined the interaction of finite man and infinite matter, artist and creative work: "There is a sense of futility and folly as well as seemingly senseless idealism and innocence built into Zimmerman's parables of the all-too-human."

Jeanne Quinn is an American ceramic artist who works primarily with installations. She is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado. She lives and works in Boulder, Colorado, and Brooklyn, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annabeth Rosen</span> American artist

Annabeth Rosen is an American sculptor best known for abstract ceramic works, as well as drawings. She is considered part of a second generation of Bay Area ceramic artists after the California Clay Movement, who have challenged ceramic traditions involving expression, form and function and helped spur the medium's acceptance in mainstream contemporary sculpture. Rosen's sculptures range from monumental to tabletop-sized, and emerge out of an accumulative bricolage process combining dozens or hundreds of fabricated parts and clay fragments and discards. Reviewers characterize her art as deliberately raw, both muscular and unapologetic feminine, and highly abstract yet widely referential in its suggestions of humanoid, botanical, aquatic, artificial, even science-fictional qualities. Critic Kay Whitney wrote that her work is "visceral in its impact, violent even, but also sensual and evocative" and "floats between the poles of the comic and the mordant."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beth Cavener Stichter</span>

Beth Cavener, also known as Beth Cavener Stichter, is an American artist based out of Montana. A classically trained sculptor, her process involves building complex metal armatures to support massive amounts of clay. Cavener is best known for her fantastical animal figures, which embody the complexity of human emotion and behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viola Frey</span> American artist (1933–2004)

Viola Frey was an American artist working in sculpture, painting and drawing, and professor emerita at California College of the Arts. She lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and was renowned for her larger-than-life, colorfully glazed clay sculptures of men and women, which expanded the traditional boundaries of ceramic sculpture.

Cristina Córdova is an American-born, Puerto Rican sculptor who works and lives in Penland, North Carolina.

Beth Lo in Lafayette, Indiana is an American artist, ceramist and educator. Her parents emigrated from China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Lord (artist)</span>

Andrew Lord is an English artist based in New York, primarily known for ceramics and drawings. In a 2010 monograph on the occasion of his exhibition at the Milton Keynes Gallery, Dawn Adès commented that his sculpture, informed by painting, ceramics, poetry, the natural world and the city, exemplifies, "The centrality of material things to memory, experience, associations."

Kurt Weiser is an American ceramicist and professor. His work—explorations of the relationship between man and nature through narratives rendered in vivid color—are described as "Eden-like." His work has often taken the form of teapots, vases, and cups, though he has recently begun crafting globes as well. Weiser is currently the Regents Professor at Arizona State University's School of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Reitz</span> American ceramic artist (1929–2014)

Donald Lester Reitz was an American ceramic artist, recognized for inspiring a reemergence of salt glaze pottery in United States. He was a teacher of ceramic art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1962 until 1988. During this period, he adapted the pottery firing technique developed in the Middle Ages, which involved pouring salt into the pottery kiln during the firing stage. The method was taught in European ceramic art schools, but largely unknown in United States studio pottery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beth Katleman</span> American artist

Beth Katleman is an American artist known for porcelain assemblage sculpture cast from found objects. Her allegorical installations fall within the genre of pop surrealism, combining decorative elements, such as Rococo embellishments and 19th century Toile de Jouy wallpaper scenery, with satirical references to consumer culture, fairy tales and classic literature. Katleman's work is in private and institutional collections and is exhibited internationally, including an installation commissioned by architect Peter Marino for Christian Dior, in the Hong Kong and London flagship boutiques. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is the recipient of the 2011 Moët Hennessey Prize, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation grant, the Watershed Generation X Award, a Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship and a residency in Cortona, Italy sponsored by the University of Georgia, Athens. Katleman holds a BA in English from Stanford University, an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and an MBA in Arts Management from UCLA.

Paula Colton Winokur (1936–2018) was an American artist. She was one of the leading ceramic artists in the United States from the 1970s until her death in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elise Siegel</span> American visual artist

Elise Siegel is an American sculptor and installation artist based in New York City. She is known for several bodies of figurative work that use subtle and ambiguous gesture and facial expression to evoke psychic and emotional states. In the 1990s, she first gained recognition for garment-like constructions that blurred boundaries between clothing, skin and body, critiquing the roles fashion and plastic surgery play in the construction of sexual and cultural identity; writer Mira Schor included Siegel among the cohort of artists she dubbed "Generation 2.5" and credited for developing the tropes of feminist art. After shifting to clay as her primary material, Siegel was one of a number of artists in the 2000s whose work spurred a rebirth in figurative ceramics emphasizing emotional expression, social conditions, identity and narrative. Her ceramic work—which ranges from roughly modeled portrait busts to highly charged, theatrical installations—is said to capture fleeting moments of internal struggle, conflict and vulnerability, creating a psychological tension with the viewer.

Linda Sormin is a Canadian artist known for her ceramics and installations. As a young child Sormin immigrated from Thailand to Canada. She attended Andrews University, Sheridan College, and Alfred University. She teaches at New York University.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Miller, Ivor (1996). "We, the Colonized Ones: Peruvian Artist Kululi Speaks about Her Art and Experience". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 20 (1): 1–25. doi:10.17953/aicr.20.1.b756081542q301vj. ISSN   0161-6463.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Copeland, Colette (2011). "Kukuli Velarde". Ceramics: Art & Perception. 2011 (83). ISSN   1035-1841.
  3. 1 2 3 Torres Quirós, Fernando. "Kukuli Velarde" (PDF).
  4. ↑ Indych, Anna (Spring 1995). "Kukuli Velarde's Syncretizations: Reconquering the Conquest". Sulfur. Ypsilanti (36): 166–171. ProQuest   884342465.
  5. 1 2 3 "Kukuli Velarde: Plunder Me, Baby". American Museum of Ceramic Art. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 Miller, Ivor (1996). "We, the Colonized Ones: Peruvian Artist Kukuli Speaks about Her Art and Experience". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 20: 1–25. doi:10.17953/aicr.20.1.b756081542q301vj.
  7. ↑ Robins, Barbara Kimberly (2001). Acts of empathic imagination: Contemporary Native American artists and writers as healers (Thesis thesis).
  8. 1 2 3 Koplos, Janet (2008). "Kukuli Velarde at Garth Clark". Art in America. 96 (2): 142.
  9. ↑ Ollman, Leah (2018-01-13). "'Plunder Me, Baby': One artist's wild, defiant stand against the oppression of indigenous people". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2019-02-21.
  10. 1 2 "KUKULI VELARDE: THE COMPLICIT EYE/ On view through March 16, 2019". Taller Puertorriqueño. 2018-03-12. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
  11. ↑ "'Freedom is very intoxicating' says artist behind 'The Complicit Eye'". WHYY. Retrieved 2019-03-02.
  12. ↑ "Points of View Speaker Series | Kukuli Velarde and The Complicit Eye | PAFA – Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts". www.pafa.org. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
  13. ↑ "Resume 2021" (PDF). Kukuli Velarde. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  14. ↑ Savig, Mary; Atkinson, Nora; Montiel, Anya (2022). This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World. Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum. pp. 228–238. ISBN   9781913875268.
  15. ↑ "Santa Chingada: The Perfect Little Woman". SAAM. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Archived from the original on 17 May 2022. Retrieved 17 May 2022.
  16. ↑ "Atragantada". MFAH. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston . Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  17. ↑ "La Linda Nasca". AIC. Art Institute of Chicago . Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  18. ↑ "Kukuli Velarde, Daddy Likee?". PAFA. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 26 May 2022.
  19. ↑ "Recipients to Date". Anonymous Was A Woman. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  20. ↑ "Kukuli Velarde". United States Artists. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  21. ↑ The Philadelphia Inquirer (2018). "Frank feminism at Taller Puertorriqueño". Nexis Uni.
  22. 1 2 3 Velarde, Kukuli (1998). "Isichapuitu". Ceramics Monthly. 46 (10): 44–45.
  23. ↑ Velarde, Kukuli; Torres, Fernando; Silva, Osvaldo Da; Clark, Garth; Runcie-Tanaka, Carlos; Koplos, Janet; Copeland, Colette; Peralta, Juan; Cáceres, Roger A (2013). Patrimonio: Kukuli Velarde : 10 de Mayo – 24 de Junio 2012 : Galería Germán Krüger Espantoso. ICPNA, Instituto Cultura Peruano Norteamericano. ISBN   9786124092169. OCLC   874857851.
  24. ↑ Velarde, Kukuli; Garth Clark Gallery (2007). Plunder me baby: an installation by Kukuli Velarde. New York: Garth Clark Gallery. OCLC   144001904.
  25. ↑ Velarde, Kukuli (2002). "Doug Herren: The Strength of Silence".
  26. ↑ Velarde, Kukuli; John Michael Kohler Arts Center (2002). Kukuli Velarde: cántaros de vida (the isichapuita series). Sheboygan, Wis.: John Michael Kohler Arts Center. OCLC   53985642.
  27. ↑ "RESUME". www.kukulivelarde.com. Retrieved 2019-02-22.
  28. ↑ Velarde, Kukuli; Velarde, Hernán; Barrionuevo, Alfonsina (1977). Kukuli (in Spanish). Lima: Ediciones Kamaq. OCLC   895175332.

Bibliography

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.