New Earth: Caribbean Mythmaking //New Works by Sofia Cordova, Jacqueline Carmen Guerrero, Joelle Mercedes // Curated by Sabrina Greig
New Earth: Caribbean Mythmaking
Works by Sofia Cordova, Jacqueline Carmen Guerrero, Joelle Mercedes
Curated by Sabrina Greig
July 7 – 29, 2017
Opening reception: Friday, July 7
6-9pm
ACRE Projects Gallery
1345 W 19th St
Chicago, IL 60608
ACRE Projects hosts the opening reception for New Earth: Caribbean Mythmaking on Friday, July 7th, 2017 from 6-9pm at 1913 West 17th Street, Chicago, IL. ACRE Projects is proud to present work by the artists Sofia Cordova, Jacqueline Carmen Guerrero, and Joel Mercedes, as part of the next installment in ACRE’s year-long series of solo exhibitions by 2016 ACRE summer residents.
New Earth: Caribbean Mythmaking: What does it look like to emancipate othered bodies? How do we, as a people, access ancestral heritage as an act of healing?
The artists on view in Future Worlds: New Caribbean Mythologies provide answers to these questions. Through imagined interior and exterior spaces, Sofia Cordova, Jacqueline Carmen Guerrero, and Joelle Mercedes re-inscribe new narratives into our past, present and future worlds from the perspective of contemporary Caribbean identities. By constructing sensory environments that envision utopic and dystopic worlds, they question the traumas that historically impact Diasporic people. Their unique approach to embodying cultural identity through sound and imagery blur the line between myth and biography in an effort to negotiate personal and collective narratives.
Originating from diverse Caribbean hubs around the globe, including Bronx, New York; Miami, Florida; and Carolina, Puerto Rico, artists in New Earth present counter-canon narratives that rewrite linear storytelling. Chicago-based artist Joelle Mercedes infuses metaphorical concepts within objects often found in intimate domestic spaces as a method of coping. Through an assortment of food, water and references to animals found in the Dominican Republic and its Diaspora, viewers will be engulfed by the water-worlds he constructs in order to demonstrate the transience of our natural world. Cordova’s post-industrial fantasies present in the video series “Echoes of a Tumbling Throne,” exhibit psychedelic interpretations of Santeria’s orishas, colonial voyages, mutant robotics, and taxidermy. Her sculptures use forms like plastic corals as sites for imagining ourselves outside our current biological orders, further allowing viewers to ruminate on issues surrounding climate change and environmental decay. Jacqueline Guerrero’s signature sequin and glitter tapestries use the deconstruction of material in order to reconstruct sacred, ephemeral spaces of the earth to enliven the soul. By activating her installations, she allows her work to act as a method of self-care for viewers to heal.
Together, all three sound and installation artists uncover the complexities of Caribbean heritage by way of ornate installations involving the natural elements. They boldly re-imagine colonial narratives to form a new cultural mythology that tap into natural cycles of rebirth, death, and transformation.