September 2024: Meet the Artists
Emiliana Henriquez, Octavio Abundez, and Sarah Zapata
Emiliana Henriquez
Emiliana's work focuses on the universal experiences of women of color. She is unafraid to explore her own vulnerabilities in her pieces. Her art is inspired by modern figurative artists such as Odd Nerdrum, Jordan Casteel, and Lisa Yuskavage, as well as classical masters such as Rembrandt, Goya, and Paul Rubens. Her unique color palettes, featuring hues such as lime green and deep red, add to the emotional atmosphere of her pieces.
Emiliana has been part of several group shows, including exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles); the nomadic Superposition Gallery, hosted by Phillips Auction House; and a month-long artist residency at the Macedonia Institute in Upstate New York. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Philosophia at Fortnight Institute in New York City and another the following year 2024 with Samuele Visentin in London, UK.
Octavio Abundez
Octavio Abundez’s practice is better comprehended when divided in three different areas of exploration: the phenomenological, the epistemological, and the topological. Each of these theoretic approaches share a common disregard for material narrowness, resulting in an ongoing experimentation that can go from classical marble sculptural techniques to photography or everyday objects such as letter boards. Abundez’s interests often interconnect, creating a range of subthematics of site specificity, self-referentiality, and playfulness. In his recent practice, he has dedicated himself to the study and investigation of utopias proposed by today’s society, in order to imagine new ones both physical and conceptual.
Recent solo exhibitions include Facts, contradictions, puzzles, an explanation and a few lies (2019) at Kohn Gallery (Los Angeles), and Schedule for the End of the World (2020) at CURRO Galeria (Guadalajara); and The Dream, sed de infinito (2017) at Museo de Arte Zapopan (Jalisco).
Sarah Zapata
Sarah Zapata’s fabric works employ traditional weaving, coiling and latch-hook techniques to achieve contemporary abstracted objects. Inspired by her Peruvian heritage and feminist theory, the artist’s body of work examines issues of labor and systems of power and control, as well as Queerness, cultural relativism and the intersectionality of identity. Zapata’s work exists between the past and the present, between craft and fine art, between South and North America.
Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include Beneath the Breath of the Sun at Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, AZ); So the roots be known at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City); and To strange ground and high places at Galleria Poggiali (Milan).
