CUERPO

A GROUP ART EXHIBIT CURATED BY ARTIST: Helen Juliet Atkins.

FEATURING WORKS FROM: Miguel Enrique Lastra, Apolo Gomez, Rachel Riviera, Helen Juliet Atkins, Vanessa Alvarado, Marlena Livingston, William Geusz.

OCT-NOV 2021

Cuerpo: An art exhibition presented by Secret Gallery throughout the months of Oct and Nov 2021. Curated by artist: Helen Juliet Atkins. This interdisciplinary showcase features contemporary artists from Albuquerque, New Mexico whose work captures and explores the nuances, experience, and duality of having a physical body. 

Miguel Enrique Lastra  

Instagram: @melm_o

Miguel is a ceramic sculptor primarily working in the tradition of capturing the human likeness, often in a state of passivity, with clay. He is often interested in positioning these bodies in contexts that continue dialogues on mortality, memory, sentimentalism, anthropocentrism, relationships to nonhuman species and ecologies, and environmental ethics. The primary stratagem for these conversations is through installation, and careful research and selection of additional materials to augment the language of the human body. The result is a richly layered curation of objects in a built environment offering various points of entry. Miguel is currently exploring intersections of interspecies collaboration with clay, sound, textile, and computation.

Miguel received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico in 2018 and is currently a 2022 Masters of Fine Arts candidate in ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design. He currently lives and works in Providence, RI.

Apolo Gomez

Instagram: @apologomez

 “In my work, I use environmental portraiture, alternative processes, and transdisciplinary media to explore relationships with men in my life from friends to lovers and acquaintances. I focus on the male gaze, the male figure, desire, intimacy, and masculinity. I grew up in a small community, throughout my adolescence I remember having a difficult time developing friendships with other boys. I didn’t understand boy culture and later on had a hard time adapting the idea of pride in masculinity. Instead I developed an awareness of my own queerness early on. I am placing men in their homes, places of intimacy and importance, photographing the way they look into the camera, the position of their bodies, the way they arrange their spaces. In these moments, I explore the disconnection of manhood filtered through the lens of my Queer gaze.”

Rachel Riviera

Instagram: @rachelriveraart

Rachel Rivera grew up in Albuquerque, NM. She curated and produced multiple exhibitions for the experimental arts organization High Mayhem in Santa Fe. Her artwork has been shown in several notable galleries and art centers throughout New Mexico. For over a decade, she honed her skills as a high-end frame maker. She restored antique originals and created period replications for museums, galleries and collectors throughout the country. She lives and works in Albuquerque. “I use art as a means for meditation, often repeating a mark or pattern such as scales, feathers, hair etc. I start with a figure and build hundreds of rows of texture with my marks, like coils of a pot, where the figures head should be. The result looks heavy, awkward and suffocating. Collectively, these marks represent my personal struggle: the very burden that I am able to relieve by meditating and creating art.” – Rachel Rivera

Helen Juliet Atkins

Instagram: @helenjuliet-art

Helen Juliet Atkins is an interdisciplinary artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She received a BA in Studio Arts from the University of New Mexico in 2016. Her studio practice, public works, and community engaged projects often focus on the intersection of art and social justice. Atkins is a 2018 recipient of the inaugural Women in Creativity “Shine” Award, which honors creative women and their community impact. She is a co-founder of Plates Against Patriarchy, a visual arts and storytelling project that challenges patriarchal systems of power. Atkins currently serves on the Albuquerque Museum Board of Trustees. While working on collaborative projects, she is also building a body of work that explores notions of experience and identity; this work has been shown in galleries nationally and internationally.

Vanessa Alvarado

Instagram: @bluebirdtileart

Painting was the first love of my life. All my life I have struggled with my weight and as a result, my body image puts a dark cloud over my mindset. Being Mexican American, I have always felt like I was part of two cultures that held a certain canon of ideal expectations for the female form; none of which I fit into. Painting allowed me to open a door in this dark room that I was stuck in. My paintings are my attempt at visually working through my insecurities and coming to terms with what my body looks like. It helped, and continues to help me move into a place of self-compassion, love, and appreciation. I am essentially trying to transfer some of my great love for painting into a part of my life that I was never able to love, my body.

 Marlena Livingston

Instagram: @softalchemy

Felting, the transformation of individual animal hairs into a solid form, is a kind of alchemy. As an artist, Marlena Livingston seeks to encourage a similar transformation within herself; evolving from a state of weakness and vulnerability to a place of wholeness and understanding, by investigating her deepest anxieties through art making. 

Marlena’s work primarily explores the intersection of physical and mental illness. She is especially interested in creating wearable pieces that exaggerate the often unexpressed burdens illness can create. Largely autobiographical, her work is inspired by a personal history of chronic pain and “mystery” illness and the subsequent experience of isolation and anxiety.

Importantly, Marlena’s practice is also concerned with healing; the soft sculptures giving her desire to heal a material form. These forms juxtapose the heavy with the amusing and whimsical, a reminder of the importance of keeping a sense of humor through difficult times.

William Geusz

Instagram: @willinandchillinarts

Will Geusz, of Willin and Chillin Arts, is a ceramicist, woodworker and sculptor from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Will has created large-scale works for public spaces and events, and started a vigorous practice in a personally constructed studio space. Since 2019, his focus has been on slip-cast ceramic sculpture. Will sculpts each design and mold, finishing each piece with a unique combination of glazes. His artworks range in scale and function, and are often inspired by nature or sci-fi.

Curators Note from Helen Juliet Atkins.

“Growing up in a bi-lingual household, the word “cuerpo '' was always appealing to me. While conversationally in Spanish it simply means body, its proximity to the English word “corpse” created a connotation in my mind that captures the dichotomy of our physical existence-  that we are alive in tandem with our decaying bodies. The artists of this exhibition capture the varied ways in which our bodies are used as cultural symbols, and also the incredible realness and individuality of the vessels we inhabit.

photo gallery of cuerpo