William Cordova | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1969 Pueblo Libre (Lima), Peru |
| Education | MFA, Yale School of Art BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Miami Central High School |
William Cordova (born 1969) is a contemporary cultural practitioner and interdisciplinary artist currently residing between Lima, Peru; North Miami Beach, Florida; and New York. [1]
William Cordova received a B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996 and later received an M.F.A. from Yale University in 2004. He graduated from Miami Central High School in 1988 and studied Visual Art at Miami Dade Community College (North Campus) from 1991 to 1994.
William Cordova has been an artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, Museum of Fine Art in Houston’s CORE program, Headlands Center for the Arts, Artpace, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council among others. He has exhibited in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Cordova was represented in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, [2] 2010 Museum of Modern Art/PS1 Greater New York exhibition, [3] an overview presentation of contemporary artists whose contributions to the arts have had a significant influence in society. In 2011, Cordova was invited for his first one person museum exhibition in Europe, yawar mallku: royalty, abductions y exiles at La Conservera, Murcia, Spain [4] and also awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. [5] Cordova was included in Prospect.3 New Orleans Biennial [6] in 2014 and the 12th Havana Biennial [7] in 2015 at Casa de Africa, Havana, Cuba. In 2016 included: SITE Santa Fe Biennial, [8] New Mexico, Southern Accents, Nasher Museum, [9] Durham, NC. In 2017 Cordova was awarded the Michael Richards Artist Award [10] by LMCC, NY and the Florida Prize by the Orlando Museum, [11] Orlando, FL.
Solo exhibitions include kuntur: transmissions & portals [12] , Illinois State University, IL and his first career survey exhibition, now’s the time: narratives of southern alchemy, [13] Perez Art Museum; Miami, FL. Group shows include Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay, Whitney Museum of American Art [14] and the 13th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba [15] 2019.
Cordova has been co-curator of the Prizm Art Fair, along with founding Director, Mikhaile Solomon, focused on African Diaspora Art, taking place during Art Basel Miami since 2017.
In 2018, he was featured in an episode of Art21 alongside artist Kerry James Marshall. The artists were included in the contemporary art show Prospect.3:Notes for Now, in New Orleans. [16] [17]
In 2019, he founded the AIM Biennial in South Florida. A statewide site specific outdoor expo as a response to the COVID pandemic and to bring attention to Floridas environmental crisis. “I wanted to prod practitioners to be more resourceful, more improvisational, to not let them forget that they are creative problem solvers,” said Cordova. [18]
Cordova is current co-Lead organizer along with artist Rick Lowe, of the Greenwood Art Project in Tulsa, Oklahoma inviting Tulsans to creatively respond to the 1921 Greenwood Centennial. In 2021 he exhibited at Storage Art Gallery curated by Onyedika Chuke. [19] Cordova was the recipient of the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship Award.
His work is in the public collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Walker Art Center, Harvard University, Yale University, Museo de Arte de Lima, Ellipse Foundation, Pérez Art Museum Miami, La Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba among others.
"William Cordova’s practice threads forward and back through time, tethering seemingly disparate relations to one another, and analyzing the echoes of history through the devices of their transmission. His work speaks to 'excluded discourses, silenced radicalisms, and insurgent practices' and with this, suggests relationships between these past moments and our own, given that what circulates in public knowledge is always already an unfinished portrait of a culture." [20]
"William Cordova does not simply give up, but diligently or perhaps doggedly, uses fund materials to offer a conceptual map to global relations that has no natural beginning or end, no fixed borders, no national allegiances. He offers a micro-economy of signs that invites us to reflect on the macro-economies of history. His method is not strictly speaking a Foucauldian genealogy, but it shares a similar commitment to finding these uncommon histories, connections, and intersections frequently overlooked in the dominant discourse of government and school text books.” [21]
“Cordova has been preoccupied with issues of transformation and interpretation since his youth, owing partly to his own transitions between countries, economies, and languages. Having recently moved from Lima to Miami, the six-year-old found comfort in the sight of what he thought were familiar Peruvian cajón drums scattered on the streets, but which were in fact discarded speaker boxes. The hulking Badussy (or Machu Picchu after dark) (2004–05) dominates the gallery with some two hundred old speakers stacked to suggest a pre-Columbian monolith.” [22]
“Much of Cordova’s work induces similarly uncanny interpretive spirals, abetted not by arbitrary Surrealist juxtapositions but the all-too-common strangeness of our own detritus and the too-often repressed histories they conceal.” [23]
“William Cordova, who comes to us by the way of the Incas, Jimi Hendrix and Miami Bass and, for oppositional sake, MTV and Yale, too, now operates in this Harlem game as cultural manufacturer of multiple self-possessed signposts (sic), less ethnographic or geographic than steatopygic. Phat yes, like dub sound system speakers, but fully cognizant of the pluripotential pregnancy of the pause button, too. The pause for the cause that allows one to stop time and affirm” [24]
“The act of reclaiming in Cordova's work is not about holding onto an old way, but of apprehending the lessons of the relationships that interacted and produced these objects. This apprehension leads to appreciation, an increase in the value of what is at hand. It is in this process of making familiar and sitting-with that social change is possible and Cordova's attempts at sparking those conversations is to be lauded.” [25]
“In trying to navigate a complex, interconnected web of meaning, these open-ended works connect these particular histories to the personal histories of each viewer. The introductory text to the exhibition suggests that such a conceptual practice “may ultimately lead to social change, which only happens when we change our perspective.” While small and seemingly open-ended, Cordova’s exhibition provides a platform for social change, one that is more capable than other, more traditional curatorial models.” [26]
“This sense of duality or even multiplicity of reading is a critical component of Cordova’s work, which he frequently creates by using puns and double meanings in both his titles and images. [27]
“He wants us to slow ourselves below a blur, so that we might again see people appear in our blind spots. He wants us to question lost relations, to listen into the emptiness, to consider the unsung circuits of influence and ideas that have made our survival possible, to become enamored once again of the sights and sounds of our path-making, and of the mystery of our continuing. He wants us to think about the sovereignty of communities, a process that moves in its own time. Cordova had reached his thirties by the time his work began attracting critical attention. But he came to the art world the way he approaches his art—purposefully, methodically, attuned to his own cadence and tempo.” [28]
In a 2020 exhibition review for Artforum magazine , the New York-based art historian and critic Jan Avgikos writes
William Cordova is a storyteller—a recuperator of ancestral memories. The artist invites us to question how we might revisit belief systems that vanished eons ago. Themes that animate his installations, objects, and collages are intoned in the material dimensions of his work, along with undulating titles that refer to sound, occult secrets, warriors, ghosts, ancient architectures, folkloric music, textiles, and the landscape of Peru. [29]
| Year | Location |
|---|---|
| 2020 | on the lower frequencies I speak 4U, Sikkema Jenkins & Co. New York, NY |
| 2018 | now’s the time: alchemy of southern narratives, PAMM Museum, Miami, FL |
| kuntur: sacred geometries, Illinois State University, IL | |
| 2017 | ankaylli: spatial and ideological terrane, Marfa Contemporary, Marfa, TX chaka: ideological terraine, 80M2 Livia Benavides, Lima, Peru smoke signals: sculpting in time, Sikkema Jenkins. NY |
| 2016 | ceiba: reconsidering ephemeral spaces, Davidson College, Davison, NC |
| 2015 | yawar mallku: metaphysics of time and space, 80M2, Lima, Peru |
| 2014 | ceiba: ephemeral landscapes, MDC Museum of Art + Design, Miami, FL |
| 2013 | yawar mallku: temporal landscapes, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY |
| 2012 | smoke signals: viviendo pa’ la ciudad, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF, CA revisiting radicalism: Espacio Aglutinador, Havana, Cuba this one’s 4U (pa’ nosotros), Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA |
| 2011 | buscame en el torbellino: but also time itself, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia yawar malku, (royalty, abduction & exile) La Conservera, Murcia, Spain |
| 2010 | untitled (chincanas), LA><ART, Los Angeles, CA |
| 2009 | More Than Bilingual, Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, Burlington, VA laberintos, Sikkema Jenkins & Co. New York, NY |
| 2007 | Pachacuti (stand up next to a mountain) Arndt & Partner, Zurich |
| 2006 | P’alante, Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany Drylongso (Pichqa Suyo) PS.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island, NY |
| Year | Location |
|---|---|
| 2020 | A Very Anxious Feeling, Taumban Museum of Art, West Virginia Rituals of Regard and Recollection, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN The Southern Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA), Winston-Salem, NC |
| 2019 | 13th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba |
| 2018 | Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY |
| 2017 | Levanta el telon, Galeria Moises Perez de Albeniz, Madrid, Spain Florida Prize, Orlando Museum, FL Monarchs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE |
| 2016 | All Power to the People, Oakland Museum of California, CA Southern Accent, Nasher Museum, Durham, NC Site Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| 2015 | MetaModern, Museum of Art, Champaign, IL |
| 2014 | Prospect.3 Biennial, Dillard University, New Orleans, LA |
| 2013 | Pop Politics, Activism at 33rpm, Centro de Arte Dox de Mayo, Madrid, Spain Hook, Line and Sinker: Contemporary Drawings, Nevada Museum, NV |
| 2012 | Now’s the Time, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY The Storytellers, Stenerson Museum, Oslo, Norway It is What it Is. Or is it? Contemporary Museum of Art Houston, TX |
| 2011 | Arte al pas:Colecao de MALI, Pinacoteca de Sao Paolo, Sao Paolo, Brazil Halleluhwah! Hommage a CAN, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH, Berlin, Germany |
| 2010 | The Record, Nasher Museum, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Greater New York, PS.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island, NY |
| 2009 | San Juan Triennial, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| 2008 | Whitney Biannual, Whitney Museum, New York, NY Prague Triennial, Prague, Czech Republic Neo-HooDoo, Menil Collection, Houston, TX Street Level, Nasher Museum, Duke University, Durham, NC |
| 2005 | Scratch, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY |
| 2003 | Utopia Station, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy |
| Year | Location |
|---|---|
| 2021 | Guggenheim Fellowship Award, New York, NY |
| 2020 | Oolite Arts Award, Miami, FL Art Matters Award, New York, NY Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, NY |
| 2017 | Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, Orlando, FL Michael Richards Artist Grant, LMCC, New York, NY |
| 2014 | Knights Foundation Grant, Prospect.3 New Orleans, LA |
| 2013 | Guna S. Mudheim Visual Arts Fellow, Berlin, Germany |
| 2011 | Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, New York, NY |
| 2009 | Art Matters Grant, New York, NY |
| 2005 | Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York, NY New York Community Trust, New York, NY |
| 2003 | Yale Graduate Skowhegan Scholarship, New Haven, CT |
| 2001 | South Florida Cultural Consortium, Miami, FL |
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a modern and contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The institution was originally founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), a prominent American socialite, sculptor, and art patron after whom it is named.
The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was in 1973. It is considered the longest-running and most important survey of contemporary art in the United States. The Biennial helped bring artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Jeff Koons, among others, to prominence.
Rachel Harrison is an American visual artist known for her sculpture, photography, and drawing. Her work often combines handmade forms with found objects or photographs, bringing art history, politics, and pop culture into dialogue with one another. She has been included in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the US, including the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial and the Tate Triennial (2009). Her work is in the collections of major museums such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Tate Modern, London; among others. She lives and works in New York.
Mel Chin is a conceptual visual artist. Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Chin works in a variety of art media to calculate meaning in modern life. Chin places art in landscapes, in public spaces, and in gallery and museum exhibitions, but his work is not limited to specific venues. Chin once stated: “Making objects and marks is also about making possibilities, making choices—and that is one of the last freedoms we have. To provide that is one of the functions of art.” His work may be found in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Barkley L. Hendricks was a contemporary American painter who made pioneering contributions to Black portraiture and conceptualism. While he worked in a variety of media and genres throughout his career, Hendricks' best known work took the form of life-sized painted oil portraits of Black Americans.
Michelle Grabner is an artist, curator, and critic based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has curated several important exhibitions, including the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art along with Anthony Elms and Stuart Comer, and FRONT International, the 2016 Portland Biennial at the Oregon Contemporary, a triennial exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio in 2018. In 2014, Grabner was named one of the 100 most powerful women in art and in 2019, she was named a 2019 National Academy of Design's Academician, a lifetime honor. In 2021, Grabner was named a Guggenheim Fellow by The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2024 Grabner was inducted into the Wisconsin Academy of Art and Science.
Dario Robleto is an American transdisciplinary artist, researcher, writer, and teacher. His research-driven practice results in intricately handcrafted objects that reflect his exploration of music, popular culture, science, war, and American history.
Terry Roger Adkins was an American artist. He was Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nicole Eisenman is a French-born American artist known for her oil paintings and sculptures. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship (1996), the Carnegie Prize (2013), and has thrice been included in the Whitney Biennial. On September 29, 2015, she won a MacArthur Fellowship award for "restoring the representation of the human form a cultural significance that had waned during the ascendancy of abstraction in the 20th century."
Simone Leigh is an American artist from Chicago who works in New York City in the United States. She works in various media including sculpture, installations, video, performance, and social practice. Leigh has described her work as auto-ethnographic, and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism. Her work is concerned with the marginalization of women of color and reframes their experience as central to society. Leigh has often said that her work is focused on “Black female subjectivity,” with an interest in complex interplays between various strands of history. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Kambui Olujimi is a New York-based visual artist working across disciplines using installation, photography, performance, tapestry, works on paper, video, large sculptures and painting. His artwork reflects on public discourse, mythology, historical narrative, social practices, exchange, mediated cultures, resilience and autonomy.
Firelei Báez is a Dominican Republic-born, New York City-based artist known for intricate works on paper and canvas, as well as large scale sculpture. Her art focuses on untold stories and unheard voices, using portraiture, landscape, and design to explore the Western canon.
Carlos Alfonzo (1950–1991) was a Cuban-American painter known for his neo-impressionistic style. His work has been collected by Whitney Museum of American Art and Smithsonian Institution.
Christopher Y. Lew is an American art curator and writer based in New York City. Lew is currently the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Carissa Rodriguez is an American artist who lives and works in New York City.
Raul de Nieves is a multimedia artist, performer, and musician. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Ryan N. Dennis is an American curator and writer who currently serves as Senior Curator and Director of Public Initiatives at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH). She was appointed in June 2023 after serving as Chief Curator and Artistic Director at the Mississippi Museum of Art's Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE). She previously served as Curator and Programs Director (2017-2020) and Public Art Director and Curator (2012-2017) at Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas. Dennis focuses on African American contemporary art with an emphasis on site-specific projects and community engagement.
Peter Beresford Williams was an American painter, educator, and social activist. His paintings have been described by writer and artist William Eckhardt Kohler as "in no particular order: hallucinogenic, acerbic, pained, beautiful, confessional, obsessive, critical, jarring, wild, weird, and profoundly human". In 2020, Williams received the Artists' Legacy Foundation Artist Award.
Adam Putnam is an American visual artist working primarily with photography, drawing, and performance art. Putnam is a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
