Ph 202/368-9793
terediaz@yahoo.com

GALA Contact:
Rebecca Medrano
202/234-7174
Rebecca@galatheatre.org

Latino Art Exhibition Opening at GALA April 12

GALA Hispanic Theatre, in conjunction with curator Teresa Diaz, presents Identity/Polemics: Latino Artist’s Conversations, an exhibition featuring three Latino artists whose work encompasses modern political and social conceptualizations relevant to the Latino experience. The exhibition contextualizes GALA’s premiere of the critically acclaimed play Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue (Elliot, fuga para un soldado), which explores the dichotomy between Puerto Rican and U.S. cultural identity as well as generational convergence and conflict.  Identity/Polemics is part of an ongoing visual program to give Latino artists a home to share their experience with the community. All thirteen works of art and their didactics will be on display April 12 – May 6 in GALA’s reception area and available for viewing Thursdays through Saturdays from 6pm until 10pm and Sundays from 2pm until 6pm.  Please contact GALA or the exhibition’s curator to schedule a viewing at other times.

About the Exhibition:
This collection of paintings, photographs and digital images represents a critical development in the DC contemporary art scene, as it exposes themes of socio-political disenchantment, feelings of manipulation, desire, acculturation, dreams, and romance through a Latino perspective rarely witnessed in the Washington’s galleries and museums.  The selected artists were chosen because of their work’s powerful content as well as their resonance with the play’s themes¾i.e. war, the military, Puerto Rican nationalism, and feelings of displacement.

Three representatives of the Latino Diaspora, Maria Dominguez, Jose Piedra and Antonio Muñoz, reveal their preoccupations with contemporary issues through digital media and painting by manipulating images from mainstream media and transposing them into familiar settings, creating a dialogue between spectator and creator.

About the Artists:
Maria Dominguez was born in Puerto Rico and migrated with her family at the age of four to New York City.  She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and continues her visual arts career as an artist-in-residence at the Young Audiences of New York.  Her experience as a public arts muralist resulted in commissions from The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the St. Luke/Roosevelt Hospital, and El Banco Popular of New York City. In 1995, Dominguez was invited by the city of Milan, Italy to create a mural installation for a government building at the Triennale de Milano. Her artistic efforts in many solo and group shows have been awarded by the National Endowment of the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her current body of works includes “Divas”, an exploration of the female image— portrayal, desire, and cosmetology, as well as the emulation of the phenomenon of “diva.” “Diva,” “Amaryllis,” and “Divalicious” are manipulations of Dominguez’ self-portrait so as to create whimsical patterns of flowers. As Dominguez describes her work, “We know that the flower’s beauty is ephemeral, it lasts a few days, and maybe this is part of the flower’s seduction that attracts us. [The diva’s] natural fragile beauty of constructed ‘perfection’ is carved by means of liposuction, nips, tucks, and magic of clever plastic surgeons,…. also short-lived.”

Alfonso Muñoz
Muñoz is a New York-based artist of Puerto Rican descent who trained at the University of Puerto Rico after a long assistantship with Italian artist Antonio Loro. He obtained his degree from the Art Institute of Chicago and since has spent the last 20 years working in Chicago, New York and Paris as a visual artist. After organizing a retrospective of artist Roger Capron, he was invited as an apprentice to study Capron’s unique style of ceramics which led him to his current body of work: a stylization of Barbie-like dolls as actors in staged miniature environments.  His 3D satiric dramatizations of super-realistic encapsulations are captured by his digital camera creating a theatrical eavesdropping on a moment in time. In “American Bar,” Muñoz depicts Abraham Lincoln as a “time-traveling bartender”, while “September 12 Shopping” illustrates the artificiality of a consumerist society through an image of a Chanel-suited shopper with anti-terrorist gear.

Jose Piedra
Jose (Pepe) Piedra came to the United States from Peru where he graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Lima. His aesthetic as a visual artist was shaped in Peru, although his career flowered in the U.S.  In 1989, he became a resident of Maryland and has participated in local as well as international exhibitions. Piedra’s paintings are reminiscent of provincial life in Casma, Peru, where isolation, purity and solemnity are juxtaposed with a longing for adventure and discovery.  In “My World,” as in “Freedom II,” Piedra expresses his desire to highlight his Latino judgment by interpreting the politics of his new home. The U.S. provides a background for his concerns, dreams, language and finally, artistic creation.

About the Curator:
Teresa Diaz is a curator specializing in Latino and Latin American artists living and working in the DC area.  In addition to academic training in Museum Studies and Mexican and Latin American Art History, she acquired extensive experience with research and curation of Latino art while working with a Latino arts and cultural center in California.  She contributes to the Latino community via her dedication by promoting, disseminating, and educating the public about Latin America’s rich cultural heritage. GALA Hispanic Theatre chose Diaz to curate their visual arts programs in the hope that it will enhance the theatre’s mission as a venue for fostering creativity, promoting learning, and empowering the Latino community through its programs.

For more information check out Artists pages