Online Studio Critiques

The Online Studio Critiques invites internationally renowned curators to critique the work of mid-career Latin American artists from Canada. Artists will present their work followed by questions by the curator who will give constructive feedback.

Gerardo Mosquera reviews the work of artist Paolo Almario, April 29, 2021.

Gerardo Mosquera reviews the work of artist Omar Estrada, April 29, 2021.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Gerardo Mosquera is an independent curator, art critic, historian, and writer based in Havana, Madrid, and the world. He is an advisor to the Rijksakademie van Beeldenden Kunsten, Amsterdam, a member of the advisory board of several international art centers and journals, and is currently co-curating the Guangzhou Image Triennial. He was co-founder of the Havana Biennial, Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, Artistic Director for PHotoSpain, Madrid, and has curated many biennials and international exhibitions around the world. Author of numerous books and texts on contemporary art and art theory, his last book just appeared in Madrid. He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Paolo Almario is a Colombian artist based in Saguenay, Quebec. In his art practice, Almario explores the relationship between the individual and space as it occupies and it structures both spatiotemporal and sociopolitical identities. His artworks are mostly installation-based and explore digital technologies (software, electronics and robotics). Paolo Almario studied design and architecture at the Universidad Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia). In 2014, he completed a master's degree in arts from the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC). His work has been supported by the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec (CALQ) and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2018, he received the CALQ Award - Creator of the Year in Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean. His works have been exhibited in Canada, Colombia, Italy, Belgium and France.

Omar Estrada is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist born in Cuba. Estrada has exhibited for over thirty years in various international events, such as the Havana Biennial (2006 and 2015), the Absolute L.A. Biennial, USA (2003), the Caribbean Triennial in Santo Domingo, D.R (2010), the Asunción Biennial, Paraguay (2015, 2019) and the Curitiba Biennial, Brazil (2017). In his interdisciplinary practice, Estrada’s installation work uses sound, video, interactivity, found objects, participatory performance and narrative text. He explores the transversal tensions between art, science, history and politics by questioning the validity - and disputing authority - of political, cultural and scientific approaches established as “absolutes”. During the past five years, Estrada has been exploring the impact of the Cold War on Latin American history and the position of Cuba as a proxy of the Eastern bloc within global geopolitical dynamics. Therefore, his own experience is incorporated -common to his generation- as a Latin-American/Caribbean/Cuban now inserted into the narratives of the “other”, which for him is North America. His latest work examines these experiences from the perspective of the production and circulation of knowledge as well as the technological as the symbolic aspect of geopolitics.

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