Fall 2022 exhibitions

El Museo del Barrio is proud to announce the opening of three new exhibitions this fall: Juan Francisco Elso: Por América; Reynier Leyva Novo: Methuselah; and DOMESTICANX. On view in Las Galerías and Room 110, the exhibitions offer new, contemporary revisions on canonical figures and theories from Latinx, Caribbean, and Latin American art history. Juan Francisco Elso: Por América explores the legacy and de-colonial reverberations of the late Cuban artist Juan Francisco Elso (1956-1988), whose work is presented alongside artists from across the Americas. Commissioned in relation to the Elso exhibition,  Reynier Leyva Novo: Methuselah is a digital artwork that explores the epic journey of a monarch butterfly from a poignant, and timely transnational perspective. Concurrently, DOMESTICANX brings together the work of seven intergenerational Latinx artists to expand on artist and critic Amalia Mesa-Bains’s theory of domesticana, first originated in the 1990s. 

Juan Francisco Elso: Por América
Organized by El Museo del Barrio and curated by invited guest curator Olga Viso in collaboration with El Museo curator Susanna V. Temkin, Juan Francisco Elso: Por América investigates the brief yet significant career of the late Cuban artist Juan Francisco Elso (1956-1988). Based in Havana, Elso was part of the first generation of artists born and educated in post-revolutionary Cuba, who gained international recognition in the early 1980s. 

Created mostly using natural, organic materials, his sculptural practice examines the complex formations of contemporary Cuban, Caribbean, and Latin American identities, as inflected by the cultural influences of Indigenous traditions, Afro-Caribbean religious beliefs, as well as the traumas of colonial oppression. The exhibition examines such legacies and parallels by placing Elso’s prescient work alongside 45 works by more than 30 artists, including Belkis Ayón, Luis Camnitzer, Glenn Ligon, Ana Mendieta, and Michael Richards, as well as new commissions by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Reynier Leyva Novo.  The show is accompanied by a publication, which will offer the first comprehensive bilingual study dedicated to the artist (available early 2023). 

Reynier Leyva Novo: Methuselah
Cuban-born and Houston based artist Reynier Levya Novo presents Methuselah, a digital artwork commissioned by El Museo with the support of VIA Art Fund. Methuselah virtually reproduces the 6000-mile transnational migratory journey of a single monarch butterfly, tracking its travel from southern Canada across the United States to Mexico. In tracing the monarch’s flight across the Americas, the project addresses larger contemporary issues related to migration, climate change, and the necessity of transnational cooperation, as expressed in the life of a singular specimen. 

At El Museo, Methuselah will be presented as an in-person, mixed reality installation in Room 110. Reservations are first-come, first-serve and must be made on-site, the day of your visit. In addition, the butterfly’s epic journey can be seen in real time at methuselahmonarch.com. 

DOMESTICANX
Curated by El Museo curator Susanna V. Temkin, DOMESTICANX, brings together seven intergenerational artists whose practices address the private sphere through works related to healing, spirituality, decoration, and the home. The show is inspired by the concept of “domesticana,” first theorized by artist, scholar and critic Amalia Mesa-Bains in the 1990s. Proposed as a Chicana and feminist response to the male-dominated “rasquachismo,” domesticana shifts the defiant and expressive inventiveness of rasquache culture to the specific experience of working-class women. DOMESTICANX encompasses paintings, textiles, ceramics, and installation, and features works by veteran artists Mesa-Bains, Nitza Tufiño and Maria Brito, alongside the first museum presentations by emerging artists Amarise Carreras, Cielo Félix-Hernández, Joel Gaitan, and Misla. 

Sponsors
El Museo del Barrio’s fall 2022 exhibitions are made possible thanks to major support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Tony Bechara; Ella Fontanals-Cisneros; Celso Gonzalez-Falla; Elizabeth Redleaf; Craig Robins; Steven and Judy Shank, and John Thomson. Commissions are made possible by VIA Art Fund and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Supported in part with public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the NYC Council.