“PUNTO DE REGRESA / POINT OF RETURN: JESUS MACARENA-AVILA”
Opening: Friday, 8 April 2007
8 April – 25 May 2007
“PUNTO DE REGRESA / POINT OF RETURN” is the first solo exhibition in Mexico for Chicago based artist, Jesus Macarena-Avila. This exhibition features site-specific installations examining cultural reclamation. Aside from the installations, a series of large-scale digital prints will be presented making commentaries on bi-culturalism, class and race. They are inspired by Mexican and South African social relevant graphics with the political satire of 1970’s African-American and Chicano visual aesthetics.
The installations make historical references to Diego Rivera’s 1915 “Zapatista Landscape” painting exploring culture linked to displacement, landscape and memory. Through the usage of fiber and popular textile art, the concept and material intersect aesthetic concerns belonging to folk and popular art forms. Since the late 1960’s, Chicano/a artists in the United States have artistically focused their artwork on reclaiming Mexican heritage.
“PUNTO DE REGRESA/POINT OF RETURN” feature installations exploring culture linked to displacement, landscape and memory.
Chicano artist and scholar such as David Rosales wrote on Rivera’s “Zapatista Landscape”: “This painting painted in Europe in 1915 could be painted in California in 2000 and still be relevant to the concepts of assimilation and misplaced histories of Chicano peoples. This painting was done by a Mexican who is far from home and working within Western Art historical means, but expressing colonial concepts of aggression and survival within assimilation issues.”
Macarena-Avila has MFA degree from Vermont College of Norwich University and studied at the School of the Art Institute, where he earned his BFA degree. He has obtained a high level of artistic accomplishments and experiences exhibiting his work in both the United States and internationally including Argentine, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Senegal, Spain and Zambia.
Publications such as ArtUS, Art Throb, Dialogue, Gravy Magazine, New Art Examiner and El Portaliano/ Fundacion Diego Portales have highlighted Macarena-Avila’s studio work and community art projects. He has lectured at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, Ohio), Columbia College Chicago (Chicago, Illinois), Witts University (Johannesburg South Africa), Centro Cultural Mapocho (Santiago, Chile), Community Arts Project (Cape Town South Africa), Bellview Art Centre (Bellview South Africa) and the Victorian College for the Arts (Melbourne, Australia). In Chicago, he is the co-founder of Polvo, an alternative cultural space for contemporary art.
CENTRO CULTURAL CASA PURCELL
Hidalgo #231, Centro Histórico, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico
Tel: (01 844) 414 50 80 / 414 55 36 Website: www.casapurcell.net
Tuesdays – Sundays: 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Mondays: closed, free admission
“PUNTO DE REGRESA / POINT OF RETURN” is partially supported by a CAAP grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs.
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