Read the article on AS IF Magazine website: click here
Portrait and Interview by Tatijana Shoan
“There’s a certain Slant of light” is the first line of a poem of the same name written by American poet and writer Emily Dickinson back in 1861. The poem likens winter sunlight to cathedral music and considers the spiritual effects of the light. Light has been a theme throughout history for poets, writers and artists, and Peruvian-American artist has taken this theme to an experiential level. More than using light to illuminate her work, light is her main medium, which she controls through a complicated and intricate proprietary computer system that allows her to choreograph rays of light in various color hues to hypnotic music. This interdisciplinary artist is known for her large-scale light sculpture installations that incorporate elements from sculpture, video, drawings, printing and technology to create site-specific installations that engage architecture and captivate viewers. Amorós’ ephemeral and transcendent works reflect her Peruvian heritage and the communities where the artwork lives, and aims to bring communities
together and build a bridge between the past, present and future. Grimanesa Amorós
“LIGHT IS EPHEMERAL,
AND I LOVE THE FACT
THAT EVERY PERSON CAN
CONNECT TO IT—PEOPLE HAVE
A RELATIONSHIP AND
ATTACHMENT TO LIGHT.”
Grimanesa Amorós
As If Magazine Issue 18 featuring Naomi Watts, Dominique Fishback, Jennifer Sears, Rainsford, and Richard Butler.
AS IF Magazine is a large-format luxury biannual publication focused on the realms of artistic expression and the visionaries behind them. We feature individuals who have made a creative mark in our society in fashion, art, design, architecture, music, film, and business. We are the recipients of over 20 national and international awards in platinum and gold for Best New Magazine, Best Editorial Design, and Best Cover Design.AS IF Magazine is currently distributed by Speedimpex USA, a leading national distributer to major US cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, among others. AS IF can also be found in five- and six-star hotels and private charter jets both domestically and internationally.Send an email or media kit to [email protected] for more information.
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We talk with Grimanesa about everything from childhood influences in engineering to her Peurvian heritage to the development of an architectural process, and how she uses light to illuminate new perspectives.
Link to the article and video interview:
https://www.womenwecreate.com/post/in-conversation-with-grimanesa-amor%C3%B3s
Link to the audio podcast interview:
https://www.womenwecreate.com/podcast/episode/464892a6/interview-with-grimanesa-amoros
Art W formed “Women We Create” as a platform for global, experiential journeys to connect art enthusiasts with artists of all disciplines to create more dialogue and opportunity for women in the arts. “Women We Create” had its inaugural journey in London during the fall of 2019.
Art W is an organization committed to promoting women working across creative disciplines by means of advocacy, curation, and education. Through a combination of awareness-raising campaigns, educational panels and tours, salon discussion series, and professional curation services, Art W aims to bring collectors, curators, and art enthusiasts together with notable women artists from around the world.
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Prof. Ruth Berktold has been teaching at the Munich University of Applied Sciences since September 2002. Her research area is architecture and the conceptual integration of computer-aided design and teaches both Bachelor and Master courses. She is the managing director of YES ARCHITECTURE with headquarters in Munich and a branch in New York.
Grimanesa Amorós is a New York-based American interdisciplinary artist with diverse interests in the fields of social history, scientific research and critical theory. Through her art she conveys an ephemeral wonder, entrancing viewers from all different backgrounds and communities to become agents of empowerment. She makes use of sculpture, video and lighting to create works that illuminate our notions of personal identity and community. She was a guest speaker at TEDGlobal 2014, earned an NEA Visual Artist Fellowship and an NEA Artist Travel Grant, and participated in the Art In Embassies Program. Her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
For more information about the Rolling Bar podcast, click here.
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2019 Enlightenment
Creative Pois-On is a New York City-basedstorytelling platform with the mission to make the powers of creativity and imagination accessible to all of us.
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In resonance with the la Biennial of Lyon, Imagespassages organizes the exhibition landscape in Annecy. Imagespassages has gathered works that relate to a visual and poetic visual creation.
Intervenant dans le champ de l’art contemporain par l’image en mouvement, Imagespassages a regroupé des œuvres qui ne manquent pas d’être en lien avec une création visuelle engagée et poétique, faisant appel à des décalages, des moyens limités de production, à des éléments façonnés sur place et à la mise en espace de personnages réels et fictionnels de par leur singularité.
La Biennale de Lyon is a cultural enterprise that alternately devises, produces and holds two major international events: the Dance Biennale and the Contemporary Art Biennale. In doing so it supports, promotes, develops and spreads their values.
MAGICAL ISA
Single Channel Video
Original Score: Dr. Adonis Gonzalez
Full Length: 5 min 13 sec
Year: 2015
Country of Production: Cuba / USA
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The Centro Cultural La Cúpula is a center of multidisciplinary art with a vocation of international exchanges, located in the historical center of the city of Merida, Yucatan, in Mexico.
Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán has the social responsibility of designing cultural extension programs aimed at the artistic and public community.
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Art Frenzy Takes Over Havana as Biennial Kicks Off By Reuters April 14, 2019
HAVANA — Cones of white paper sprout from the seasalt-eroded pillars of one colonial building along Havana’s seafront, elaborately painted curtains cascade from another while out front children play with an installation of multicolored hoses.
Havana’s 13th Biennial kicked off this weekend with works by more than 300 contemporary artists from 52 countries taking over the city’s museums, galleries and open-air spaces, and many more collateral exhibits.
“They turned my home into an artwork,” said Silvia Perez, smiling at the paper sprouting from the colonnade of her home, a piece by Cuban artist Elio Jesús Fonseca. “The artist said it meant peace.”
The transformation of the Malecon seafront boulevard into an open-air, interactive gallery, has become one of the most popular venues of Cuba’s most important arts event.
Along the sidewalk this year are smooth boulders encased in volcanic slabs by Mexican artist Jose Davila, while a swirling light installation by Peruvian artist Grimanesa Amoros protudes from a building.
Cuba’s Communist government, which has heavily promoted the arts since the country’s 1959 leftist revolution, created the Havana Biennial in 1984 to promote artists from the developing world, especially Cuban ones.
This year, 80 Cubans will exhibit their work, including a performance on Monday by Manuel Mendive, considered the Caribbean island’s top living artist.
Still, it also includes a large contingent of European and U.S. artists including Cuban-Americans like Enrique Martínez Celaya and Emilio Perez.
Biennial Director Jorge Alfonso said it had been a challenge to stage the biennial given Cuba’s difficult economic situation – authorities postponed it half a year – but that it had succeeded underscored the importance Cuba placed on culture.
“Not even in the most difficult moments have we ever given up on staging one of these kind of events,” he told Reuters.
“The slogan of this year’s edition, ‘the construction of the possible’, is related to our ideal that a better world is possible.”
Some artists who are critical of the government however have subverted that slogan.
In one piece on the Malecon called “Potemkin Village”, Cuban-born artist Juan Andres Milanes Benito who lives in Norway has propped what appears to be the perfect facade of a building on another that is falling into disrepair.
“It fits a lot with the Cuban government these days and how the system is working – there is a lot of facade,” he said. “Inside it is not so perfect.”
Originally he had wanted to replicate the facade of a renovated government building but authorities would not allow him, he said.
Some Cuban artists feel the Havana Biennial itself is a facade papering over simmering tensions between them and authorities.
Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, who led a campaign against a controversial new decree on the cultural sector last year, was arrested last Friday after staging a small yet politically charged performance in his neighborhood.
His whereabouts remain unknown, his friends say. Asked by Reuters about the arrest in a news conference, the head of Cuba’s National Council of Visual Arts, Norma Rodriguez, said “as far as I know he is an activist not an artist”.
Cuba considers dissidents to be mercenaries in the pay of the United States trying to subvert the government.
Why we love her: The Peruvian-born light artist makes weird, winding installations that explore her interest in nature, technology, and people. Over the summer she presented “Hedera,” a monumental sculpture made of glowing red-and-white tentacles that covered a ceiling of illuminated orbs, erected in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
How she organizes her clothing: “I have uniforms for traveling, for lectures, and for the studio. I don’t know if people who visit me here realize I’m actually wearing the same outfit all the time. I have it hanging in my bathroom, so it’s easy to put on. The uniforms began when I started traveling a lot. They are useful because you have more time to focus on work. I love that I can get dressed in two minutes—maybe five, to be generous.”
About all those rings: “I sleep with my jewelry on. I always wear it on all of my fingers and never my neck—I have necklaces, but they are itchy and get stuck in my hair. I used to have beads, which were given to me by spiritual leaders from temples I visited in Asia. But they became very common and lost their spirituality for me, so I stopped wearing them.”
