Contemporary Latin American exhibition now on view at OSU’s newly renovated Gardiner Gallery of Art
Monday, October 9, 2023
Media Contact: Elizabeth Gosney | CAS Marketing and Communications Manager | 405-744-7497 | egosney@okstate.edu
Oklahoma State University’s Gardiner Gallery of Art has opened a new exhibition featuring a group of internationally acclaimed Latin American artists.
“Modos de ver/Ways of Seeing” was organized to coincide with Latin American and Hispanic Heritage month, as well as to celebrate the recent renovation of the Gardiner Gallery of Art, which was completed thanks to a gift from the Hearst Foundations.
The exhibition showcases the works of eight multigenerational artists whose pieces speak to pre-Hispanic and colonial heritage while referring to different migrations in and from Latin America. Encompassing a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, installation and video, the artworks grapple with issues such as modernity, coloniality, patriarchy and gender.
Artists in the exhibition give voice to peripheral communities by presenting traditional materials and techniques in combination with new technologies and methods of making, which encourage viewers to form new ways of seeing the past in order to better understand the present.
“This exhibition is an invitation, especially for the next generation of makers, to explore different strategies of seeing the world,” said Chris Whittey, head of the Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History at OSU. “The act of truly seeing — as opposed to merely looking — has the power to create other existences, other futures, and other modes of thinking, illuminating a more expansive path forward for our community of artists, designers and scholars.”
The list of prestigious artists in “Modos de ver/Ways of Seeing” include Francheska Alcántara, who was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Ana Buitrago, born in Bogotá, Colombia; Isabella Cruz-Chong, born in Austin, Texas; Roberto Gil de Montes, born in Guadalajara, Mexico; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, born in Mexico City; Sandra Monterroso, born in Guatemala City; Abigail Reyes, born in San Salvador, El Salvador; and Edra Soto, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The artists in the exhibition have prolific careers, from presenting their work at the Venice Biennale in Italy to showing in major institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Bronx Museum of Art and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
“Chicago-based Puerto Rican artist Edra Soto has created an artwork installation specifically for the Gardiner Gallery windows,” Gardiner Gallery director Lindsay Aveilhé said. “We are elated to present our students and the OSU community with such personalized and thought-provoking artworks.”
The exhibition also includes a public art piece by Reyes in two different locations on campus in a series of A-frames near the Student Union and on the corner of Monroe Street and Farm Road.
The exhibition is co-curated by Aveilhé and Silvia Benedetti, a New York-based Venezuelan curator, with support from curatorial assistant Valentina Plata and gallery assistant Ruth Sanchez. A bilingual exhibition catalogue was produced and is available for free at the Gardiner Gallery.
This free exhibition is open to the public through Friday, Oct. 27. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Modos de ver/Ways of Seeing” is sponsored by OSU student fees, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Oklahoma Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.