FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Johanna Taylor
33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
718.875.4047 x11, jtaylor@bricartsmedia.org
high resolution images available upon request
BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn Presents
Status Report at BRIC Rotunda Gallery
Exhibition of Mexican and Latino artists examining themes of
immigration and borders opens 2009-2010 season.
Brooklyn, NY – BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn will open its 2009-2010 contemporary art season at BRIC
Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn Heights on Thursday, September 3, 2009, with the exhibition Status
Report. To be on view through Saturday, October 10.
Status Report presents work by contemporary Mexican and Latino artists, highlighting the varied ways
that artists have examined the themes of immigration, the U. S./Mexican border, and work. Exhibiting
artists – based in Brooklyn and greater New York, the West Coast, and Mexico – include Margarita
Cabrera, Sergio de la Torre and Vicky Funari, Christina Fernandez, Coco Fusco, Erika Harrsch,
Pedro Lasch, Delilah Montoya, and Dulce Pinzón.
Status Report is the first exhibition in New York to consider the issue of Mexican immigration, the
border, and work through the lens of contemporary, urban artists. Its organization has been inspired by
the enormous growth in Mexican population in New York – particularly in Brooklyn – in the last decade.
In fact, the city’s Mexican population has roughly sextupled since 1990.
The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, Director of Contemporary Art, and a long-time specialist
in Mexican and Latino contemporary art and photography. Ferrer’s recent projects in the realm of
Mexican art include a 2006 book and exhibition on the modern photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo
sponsored by the Aperture Foundation, New York, and a definitive survey on the photographer and
printmaker Mariana Yampolsky presented at the UBS Art Gallery, New York, in 2007.
The opening party for Status Report will be held on Wednesday, September 2, 7-9 pm. The festive
event will feature a music set by DJ Papichulo.
The artists included in Status Report use varied media and approaches to examine the subject of
immigration.
The physical reality of the U.S./Mexico border is emotionally interpreted by New Mexico-based artist
Delilah Montoya in her series of striking large-scale photographs. Montoya expresses the rugged,
desert landscape of southern Arizona as a place of human passage and struggle, picturing a oncepristine landscape littered with plastic water bottles and other evidence of human migration. In the
ongoing series, Lationo/a America, Pedro Lasch presents a series of maps of North and South
America. The work takes the form of maps, each given by Lasch to persons of diverse social
background, and returned to the artist after crossing into the United States. The maps are accompanied
by texts in the immigrant’s own words. The statements can be poignant, such as that of Vicencio
Marquez, whose text notes in part, “…we hid in something like a lagoon of sewage…the helicopters
arrived and they pointed their weapons at us…”
Born in Mexico and based in Long Island City, Erika Harrsch poses the question: What if the borders
between the U. S., Canada, and Mexico (members of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or
NAFTA), were eliminated, creating a single, united realm? To that end, Harrsch has created The United
States of North America, an interactive installation that will premiere in China at the 2009 Beijing 798
Biennale, and in the U.S. in Status Report at BRIC Rotunda Gallery. The work’s centerpiece is a
passport for the fictitious country, whose emblem is the monarch butterfly. Known for their epic annual
migrations between Canada and the United States and Mexico, the monarch butterfly is cast as an
ultimate symbol of freedom, of existence without borders. Inside the passport, Harrsch has converted
visas and entry stamps into texts focusing on issues of migration and human rights. The installation also
includes a game show wheel offering visitors chance to win a passport, a sardonic action meant to
connote the absurdity of U.S. immigration policies.
Several artists in the exhibition focus on the work that immigrants perform once in the United States.
The Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist Coco Fusco’s will exhibit her 90-minute video Dolores 10 to
10, based on the story of Delfina Rodriguez, a worker at a maquiladora (a Mexican factory typically
owned by a multinational and staffed by low-wage workers who assemble goods for the U.S. market)
accused of unionizing activities. Fusco’s video, in which she portrays Rodriguez, recreates the woman’s
detention and questioning on simulated surveillance footage that will be shown on monitors mounted in
four locations at BRIC Rotunda Gallery.
The exhibition will include regular screenings of Maquilapolis (city of factories), a 2006 film by Vicky
Funari and Sergio de la Torre. This hour-long documentary includes footage shot by factory workers
who have become community activists. The filmmakers provided them with instruction in the use digital
video cameras, sound recording, and documentary story telling; the women then made video diaries
about life in their families and communities and their difficult work conditions. The film gives the
documentary subjects a voice in their own representation, in a story about the difficult issues these
workers face – paltry wages (one protagonist in the film makes $6.00 a day), labor violations,
environmental devastation, and urban chaos – the less visible side of the global economy.
Other artists to be included in Status Report are Los Angeles-based photographer Christina
Fernandez, U. S. and Mexico-based photographer Dulce Pinzón, and El Paso-based sculptor
Margarita Cabrera.
In September 2009, BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn will also launch Moving Wall | Pictures, a curated film
and video series that will join BRIC’s robust public programming. BRIC’s public programs include panel
discussions, film screenings, and art-making workshops, presented in conjunction with BRIC’s
contemporary art exhibitions to add texture and new readings to the works of art on view. The
inaugural Moving Wall | Pictures season will begin with a film program curated in conjunction with the
opening exhibition Status Report. On Wednesday, September 9 at 7:00 p.m. exhibition artist Coco
Fusco will lead a discussion on moving image portrayals of border issues, focusing on her video
Dolores from 10 to 10; Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre’s Maquilapolis, and Alex Rivera’s Sleep
Dealer (winner of the Sundance Film Festival 2008 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. Coco Fusco is a
Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, writer, and Director of Intermedia Initiatives for the School of Art
Media and Technology at Parsons/The New School for Design, New York. Fusco has performed,
lectured, exhibited and curated around the world since 1988.
Status Report is sponsored by The Mexico Cultural Institute of New York with support from the Mexico
Tourism Board.
Directions
Located in Brooklyn Heights, BRIC Rotunda Gallery is a short walk from the 2,3; 4,5; M; or R trains at
Court Street/Borough Hall; or the A, C trains at High Street.
Hours
The Gallery is open to the public free of charge from Tuesday through Saturday, 12 – 6 pm.
BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn is a multi-disciplinary arts and media non-profit dedicated to presenting
contemporary art, performing arts, and community media programs that are reflective of Brooklyn’s
diverse communities, and to providing resources and platforms to support the creative process. All of
our offerings are free or low cost, to enhance the public’s access to and understanding of arts and
media. Each year, upwards of a million people in Brooklyn and citywide are served through our
programs.
BRIC Contemporary Art presents exhibitions, public events, and an innovative arts education program
at BRIC Rotunda Gallery and around the borough. Our aim is to increase the visibility and accessibility
of contemporary art while bridging the gap between the art world and global culture in Brooklyn.
Support for BRIC Contemporary Art has been generously provided by: Astoria Federal; Bloomberg LP;
Bloomingdale’s Fund of the Macy’s Department Stores Foundation; Con Edison; Educational
Foundation of America; Independence Community Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation;
National Endowment for the Arts; New York City Council members: Lewis Fidler, Vincent Gentile, Sara
M. Gonzalez, Domenic Recchia, Diana Reyna, Kendall Stewart, and David Yassky; New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs; New York State Council on the Arts; New York Assembly - Brooklyn
delegation; New York Senate - Brooklyn delegation; Robert Lehman Foundation; Samuel H. Kress
Foundation; Target; TD Bank; and William Randolph Hearst Foundation in addition to numerous
individuals.
For more info visit bricartsmedia.org/contemporaryart
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