Cypress College Art Gallery SUR:Biennial 2023

SUR:Biennial > 2023 >  Cypress Art Gallery

Address: 9200 Valley View Street Cypress, CA 90630 
Phone: (714) 484-7000
Website: https://www.cypresscollegeart.com/ccgallery

Ground Control

Control Ground

Curated By Stephanie Sabo

On View October 5 - November 22, 2023 
Opening Reception: October 5 2023. 6pm – 8pm 

Participating Artists:

Eva Aguila 
Maria Thereza Alves
Carolina Aranibar-Fernández
Jackie Castillo
Minerva Cuevas
Maria Laura Hendrix
Minga Opazo
Mayela Rodriguez 
Christina Villamor 

Speaker Series: 
Carolina Aranibar- Fernandez Monday, October 16, Noon – 1:30 pm, ZOOM
Jackie Castillo Wednesday, October 25, 9:30 am – 11:00 am
Mayela Rodriguez  Wednesday, October 25, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Minga Opazo: Wednesday, Tuesday, November 7th, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Eva Aguila: Thursday, November 9, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Ground Control brings together an international roster of 9 artists whose work is driven by a research-intensive critique of the transmutation of the natural world into capital. Providing an important survey of intergenerational Latina voices, the collection of photography, installation, sculpture, video, painting, and printed material on view revisits Eduardo Galeano’s seminal text Open Veins of Latin America. Fiftyyears ago, this book shifted the dialogue surrounding the global south away from a focus on the presumed need for economic development. “In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy,” he wrote, “gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.” Subsequent historiographies have had to acknowledge the role that international monetary policy had—and continues to have—in enacting a project of dependency in these regions.
 
The works on view in Ground Control grapple with the colonial legacy in Latin America. From the mining of mineral resources such as copper and petroleum, to the commodification and rarefication of public goods such as water and land, to the compelled migration and exploitation of human labor, the artists’ awareness of the forces of empire inflects their visually compelling work.