SPIT! wrote a series of queer manifestos that were initially performed at Frieze projects, London. In the 2019 video, Greek artist Despina Zacharopoulos performs WE THE ENEMY, a summary of derogatory slangs and insults to queer people. Spoken by Zacharopoulos with defiant pride, these terms are re-appropriated becoming watchwords or a kind of summoning of the powerless.
_
2019
3’49’’
HD video, 16:9, color, sound
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
The MACBA presents Pleas of Resistance, a major survey exhibition of Carlos Motta. The show spans a quarter-century of Motta’s artistic production, addressing key themes such as the decolonization of knowledge and the questioning of normative views on sexuality, religion, and politics.
Curated by María Berríos and Agustín Pérez-Rubio, the exhibition highlights Carlos Motta’s commitment to social justice and activism through works that address discrimination in conservative political contexts, the struggle of queer communities, and decolonization projects in Latin America.
Pleas of Resistance is organized in four intersecting chapters. The exhibition focuses on Motta’s rigorous artistic research and his continuous questioning of the archive—its violences and silences, its fears and desires. His work challenges the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies—from the time of conquest and colonial rule in the Americas to the present day—and examines religion’s legacy as both a perpetrator and a disruptive agent of coloniality.
14’32’’
4K video. Color and sound 5.1
Photo video stillDirector of Photography and Camera Operator – Flora Dias
Camera Operator B – Mirrah da Silva
Sound capture, soundtrack, mix and master – Luisa Lemgruber
Performers/Artists – Alessandro Aguipe, Ana Musidora, Flow Kountouriotis, Karen Marçal, Mariana Taques, Tadzio Veiga, Vitor Martins Dias, Vulcanica Pokaropa
Production – Felipe Melo Franco
Studio – Zanella Creative Studio
Post-production – Angela Herr
Additional post-production – João Marcos de Almeida
Graphic design – Lauryn Siegel
106,5 x 78,5 cm each part of 5
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
Photo Filipe Berndt
106,5 x 78,5 cm each part of 5
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
Photo Filipe Berndt
106,5 x 78,5 each part of 5
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
Photo Filipe Berndt
variable dimensions
wheatpaste on wall
Photo Filipe BerndtIn his second solo exhibition at Vermelho, Carlos Motta occupies the gallery’s facade with one of his Gravidade drawings, a two-part project consisting of a fragmented graphite drawing and a 14-minute video, commissioned by Vermelho and produced in São Paulo. The drawing depicts humans urgently caring for one another. The figures hold, carry, and drag each other carefully, visibly struggling with the weight of the bodies, yet determined to help one another persist in the midst of a barren desert where only a few patches of green grass suggest the hope of survival.
variable dimensions
Sandstone 3D Prints
Photo Benjamin GilbertBeloved Martina is a series of 10, 3D sandstone prints that depict the mythological figure of the “hermaphrodite,” based on sculptures from Greek and Roman antiquity, the Renaissance, and photographs from the late nineteenth century. Exhibited in a formal, museum-like installation, the sculptures confront the institutional drive to categorize and define with its authoritative gaze. The work reflects on the restrictive nature of the gender binary and its own mythologizing forces, and points to the historical and ongoing repression of intersex identities.
71,8 x 100,6 cm
Graphite on paper
The Fall of the Damned, Motta’s ongoing series of graphite drawings, explores the idea of mass-infection through the visual metaphor of the swarm. Featuring dense tangles of snakes, birds, hyenas, and humans, these works allegorize dehumanization as a social consequence of sickness and disease. These violent and erotic drawings are informed by art historical depictions of hell as well as human barbarism, commenting on inhuman tendencies across many cultures to stigmatize illness by conflating heath and morality.
71,8 x 100,6 cm
Graphite on paper
The Fall of the Damned, Motta’s ongoing series of graphite drawings, explores the idea of mass-infection through the visual metaphor of the swarm. Featuring dense tangles of snakes, birds, hyenas, and humans, these works allegorize dehumanization as a social consequence of sickness and disease. These violent and erotic drawings are informed by art historical depictions of hell as well as human barbarism, commenting on inhuman tendencies across many cultures to stigmatize illness by conflating heath and morality.
with wall plinth 30 x 13 x 13 cm with floor plinth 155 x 13 x13 cm
bronze + cement plinth
Photo Edouard FraipontWE THE ENEMY (2019) is a series comprised of 41 bronze sculptures based on representations of the devil drawn from art history: paintings that portray Satan in hell, drawings, illustrations, and sculptures that represent evil embodied.
Each figure defies normative moral standards of beauty, respectability, and behavior. Among this army of demons, there are characters who suggest sexual perversion – as typified by traditional catholic imagery.
Motta’s multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation.
As a historian of untold narratives and an archivist of repressed histories, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies.
The complete set of WE THE ENEMY is now on view in Carlos Motta: Your Monsters, Our Idols, Motta’s survey exhibition on view at The Wexner Center for the Arts.
Carlos Motta’s largest exhibition in the US to date celebrates the Colombian-born, New York–based artist’s commitment to radical difference and the debut of his Wex-commissioned project.
29’20’’
Video – color, sound
Photo video stillThis video piece presents a 30-minute endurance performance made by Carlos Motta for the camera. Legacy shows the artist looking straight at the camera as he wears a dental gag and tries to read out a timeline of HIV/AIDS, from 1908 to 2019, dictated to him by American radio broadcaster Ari Shapiro. Unable to speak clearly, struggling to remember the lines and in pain, the artist gradually and visibly exhausts himself.
directed and performed by: Carlos Motta
research: Ted Kerr, Carlos Motta
voice over: Ari Shapiro
camera: Tyler Haft
drawing: Luca Cruz Salvati, Carlos Motta
“Carlos Motta: Corpo Fechado is a multi-disciplinary exhibition by Colombian-born, New York-based artist Carlos Motta. For this project, which took almost two years to prepare, Carlos Motta carried out an extensive investigation of different documents and sources—including legal processes of the Inquisition—in Portuguese institutions, archives, and museum collections, in an attempt, to create alternative narratives to official History/ historiography. By focussing on marginalized communities and identities, Carlos Motta’s work establishes relationships between stories of queer culture and activism and mainstream historical accounts, to insist that the politics of sex and gender represent an opportunity to form critical positions against social injustice. In Corpo Fechado, Carlos Motta addresses the issues of colonialism in Latin America he has been working on since his Nefandus Trilogy (2013), emphasising the need to form an intersectional queer historical perspective.”
– text by Denise Ferreira da Silva about the exhibition
152,4 x 105,5 cm each part of 2
Pigmented mineral inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Luster 260g paper
Photo Carlos MottaThe diptych of portraits of José Francisco Pedroso (2019) – an African enslaved man who, along with José Francisco Pereira, crafted and distributed bolsas de mandinga – is part of the series of contextual works to Corpo Fechado: The Devil’s Work. Carlos Motta collaborated with Portuguese-Guinean actor Welket Bungué to create this portrait, where Bungué’s wears a bolsa de mandiga offered to him by his own mother.
76,2 x 114,3 cm
Pigmented mineral inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Luster 260g paper
Photo Edouard FraipontIn Untitled Self-Portrait #3, is a photograph where Motta depicts himself simultaneously mournful and resolute, showing a clenched resilient fist, and resting his wistful head on a mirrored surface. As Jack McGrath warns: “Sometimes to gaze into a mirror is to see the malefactors of history leering back out, and real progress requires the courage to criticize even oneself.”
108 x 73 x 9 cm
Framed whip
Photo Vermelho
25'
16:9 HD video, sound, color
Photo Video still
19'
Video HD. 16:9. color and sound
Photo video stillThis video presents an interview with Paulo Pascoal, the actor who plays José Francisco Pereira in Corpo Fechado: The Devils Work. Pascoal is a well-known actor in his home country of Angola, who after coming out as a gay during a TEDxLuanda talk, endured death threats, which lead him to migrate to Portugal. In Lisbon, where he currently resides, Pascoal finds himself trapped in a sort of immigration limbo, unable to re-enter Portugal should he ever leave. As Jack McGrath wrote, “the biography of the actor therefore resonates with the life of his character, mutatis mutandis, crisscrossing oceans of both water and time in spectral fulfillment of Benjamin’s historical method”.
14' 41''
HD video, color and sound
Photo Video stillCommissioned by the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia and first presented at the Claustro de San Agustín in Bogotá, Lágrimas is a musical and visual essay that uses tears as a metaphor for difference and social inequity and documents images of objects of three collections that present medical pathologies and anatomical deformities: The waxes from the Museo de Medicina of the Universidad Nacional, a collection of pre-Colombian figures and a series of photographs from the Museo de Historia de la Medicina Ricardo Rueda González of the Academia Nacional de Medicina in Bogotá, and some objects from doctor and anthropologist Hugo Sotomayor’s personal collection. The video reflects on the way in which “different” bodies have been represented and discussed throughout medical history. Lágrimas approaches what has been categorized as sick, pathological, rare and different, and consequently has been relegated to the margins of “normality.” The video is accompanied by an original soundtrack composed by musician Ian Tuner and it’s based on “LACHRIMAE” (1604) by John Dowland, a composition that reflects on different types of tears from a social and cultural perspective. Lágrimas is accompanied by a publication edited by Popolet Editions, distributed free of charge, with a selection of images and an interview between Carlos Motta and Hugo Sotomayor that serves as a living room guide and expands the historical and cultural significance of the objects.
Requiem
Between October 2016 and February 2017, Carlos Motta presented the Requiem project at MALBA, under commission from the Argentinian museum. Requiem investigates the tense historical relationship between religion and divergent sexualities through a series of works that propose alternative visions to the moral values promoted by Christian doctrine. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the three-channel video installation entitled Requiem, which explores the narrative of liberation and transcendence attributed to the death and resurrection of Christ from a sexual re-reading of these stories. For this, Motta retakes the thoughts of the Argentine theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid and her Indecent Theology (2000). In the three videos, based on performative acts, the transcendent body is sexualized, “cured”, politicized and poetized, in search of new fictions that consider sexual differences.
Motta wonders: what would happen if we imagined an inclusive future for all, a future achieved by taking the paths that have always been presented as “impossible”? What would be the influence of a true reform of Catholic doctrine: a reform that considered the lives of people traditionally excluded because of their sexual orientation? What if the reform is the abolition of the institution? Is not it an impossible future, a desirable future? Through speculation and fiction, the exhibition proposes a clear look at the present and the great influence that the Church exerts on society.
76,2 x 42,4 x 33,5 cm
3D Sculpture
7' 39''
Video, color and sound
Photo Video stillCarlos Motta, along bondage artists Stefano Laforgia and Andrea Ropes, perform an inversion inside a 16th century chapel, an action that references Caravaggio’s “Crucifixion of Saint Peter” from 1600.
21’12’’
Video, color and sound
Queer and feminist theologian Linn Tonstad delivers a poignant critique of religious narratives referencing “Indecent Theology,” the work of Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid.
2' 37''
Black and white video, sound
Photo Video stillItalian performer Ernesto Tomasini performs “Libera Me” from Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem”
Variable dimensions
Sandstone 3D Prints Photo Carlos Motta Beloved Martina is a series of ten small-scale sandstone 3D-printed sculptures modeled on Greco-Roman, 16th and 17th century statues of Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose body merged with that of the water nymph Salmacis into an androgynous form. Two of the sculptures are modeled on late 19th and early 20th century black and white photographs and one by French photographer Nadar. The sculptures are of the enduring historical fascination with the intersex figure and the ways in which intersex bodies have been subject to the classifying gaze.
Variable Dimensions
10-channel video installation and plywood platform
Produced with funds from the Future Generation Art Prize, Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… (2015) was developed in conversation with Ukrainian journalist Maxim Ivanukha and is composed of ten urgent interviews with Ukrainian LGBTI and queer activists who discuss the critical and dire situation of lesbian, gay, trans and intersex lives in Ukraine in times of war.
Confronted with innumerable challenges, Ukrainian LGBTI citizens are vulnerable targets of a violent homophobic rhetoric and remain largely under-recognized by a government that deems sexual and gender issues minor in light of the serious Ukrainian economic and political crisis.
Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… features testimonies by Alexander Zinchenkov, Anonymous, Anatoliy Yerema, Maxim Eristavi, Nina Verbytskaya, Olena Shevchenko, Oksana, Yuriy Frank, Yuri Yoursky and Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk. These eleven courageous Ukrainians relentless activism greatly contributes to the formation of a new and democratic post-Revolution of Dignity Ukraine.
Variable dimensions
10-channel video installation and plywood platform
Produced with funds from the Future Generation Art Prize, Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… (2015) was developed in conversation with Ukrainian journalist Maxim Ivanukha and is composed of ten urgent interviews with Ukrainian LGBTI and queer activists who discuss the critical and dire situation of lesbian, gay, trans and intersex lives in Ukraine in times of war.
Confronted with innumerable challenges, Ukrainian LGBTI citizens are vulnerable targets of a violent homophobic rhetoric and remain largely under-recognized by a government that deems sexual and gender issues minor in light of the serious Ukrainian economic and political crisis.
Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… features testimonies by Alexander Zinchenkov, Anonymous, Anatoliy Yerema, Maxim Eristavi, Nina Verbytskaya, Olena Shevchenko, Oksana, Yuriy Frank, Yuri Yoursky and Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk. These eleven courageous Ukrainians relentless activism greatly contributes to the formation of a new and democratic post-Revolution of Dignity Ukraine.
Variable dimensions
Room-size installation composed of 20 letterpress printed drawings with magnifying lenses and fluorescent lightbulbs
La puissance et la jouissance is a room-size installation composed of twenty miniature letterpress printed drawings installed behind the walls and made visible only by looking through with magnifying lenses. The drawings are based on a variety of historical images that depict unconventional sexual practices such as scenes of bestiality, hard gay sex practices, representations of female sexuality, Roman mythological figures engaged in sex, and religious iconography that has been appropriated by gay culture. The piece invites the viewer to experience the ways in which certain desires were historically constructed as unnatural and consequently rendered marginal and invisible. Désirs The piece’s title references Copi’s cartoon La puissance ou la jouissance made for the Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire’s Rapport contre la normalité from 1971.
9,6 x 29,6 x 37,2 cm
Hand-made linen portfolio case containing 20 letterpress printed drawings and a magnifying lense
9,6 x 29,6 x 37,2 cm
Hand-made linen portfolio case containing 20 letterpress printed drawings and a magnifying lense
32' 37''
Video color and sound
Photo Video stillDeseos [Desires], 2015, exposes the ways in which medicine, law and religion shaped discourses of the gendered body through the narration of two stories: Martina’s, who lived in Colombia in the 19th century and was prosecuted for being a hermaphrodite, and Nour’s, who lived in Beirut during the Ottoman Empire and was forced to marry to her female lover’s brother.
Part documentary and part fiction, the film presents a correspondence between two women who faced the consequences of engaging in same sex relations and defying gender norms.
The screenplay for Deseos was written by Carlos Motta and Maya Mikdashi.
Deseos was commissioned by Council (Paris), premiered at the Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art in September 2015 and has since screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam and other festivals.
22,86 x 30,48 cm
Pencil and water color on paper
Based on a Quimbaya culture illustration
30,48 x 22,86 cm
Pencil and water color on paper
Based on an undocumented chronicle about a pre-Hispanic indigenous culture from Colombia
8,9 x 25,4 cm
Hand carved obsidian stone
In 2013, Carlos Motta presented the Nefandus project, featuring a series of works that explored the imposition of European epistemological categories onto native cultures during the Spanish and Portuguese Conquest of the Americas.
The project includes photographs, sculptures and a video, all of which addressing subjects that were deemed “exotic,” “wild,” or “native”.
The works defied these concepts and asked for alternative narratives to colonial history.
2 x 1 cm (figure) e 23 x 10 cm (magnifying glass)
Gold washed silver sculpture and magnifying glass
In 2013, Carlos Motta presented the Nefandus project, featuring a series of works that explored the imposition of European epistemological categories onto native cultures during the Spanish and Portuguese Conquest of the Americas.
The project includes photographs, sculptures and a video, all of which addressing subjects that were deemed “exotic,” “wild,” or “native”.
The works defied these concepts and asked for alternative narratives to colonial history.
33,9 x 50,8 cm each part of 40
Inkjet on paper
Taxonomy of the Wild presents forty photographs of decaying murals that depict “wild” animals. The photos were shot in Bangalore, India. Within the larger context of the project Nefandus, these photographs attempt to illustrate the construction of the colonial category of the wild, which like sexuality, was imported by European settlers.
33,9 x 50,8 cm each part of 40
Inkjet on paper
Taxonomy of the Wild presents forty photographs of decaying murals that depict “wild” animals. The photos were shot in Bangalore, India. Within the larger context of the project Nefandus, these photographs attempt to illustrate the construction of the colonial category of the wild, which like sexuality, was imported by European settlers.
64 x 68 x 30 cm
Miniature replica of boat in vitrine
A miniature replica of Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria. The only one of his three ships that didn’t return to Europe after the Conquest because it collapsed near the Island of Hispaniola.
2,5 cm x 3,8 cm
Letterpress printed drawing
Drawing based on the photograph Lou, N.Y.C in Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio (1978)
2 x 1 cm each part of 10
Gold-washed silver sculpture
[Towards a Homoerotic Historiography features] 20 miniature gold-washed silver figures, all copies of sculptures created by indigenous groups in the Americas before the conquest. Displayed in museum-like vitrines, the pieces depict acts of homoerotic sex. The installation reflects on the ongoing censorship these objects have been subjected to by the social sciences and encourages a removal of the Christian values that have been imposed on them in order to reconsider of the role the body, desire, and pleasure may have played in ancient cultures.
Deviations to Love is a series of 7 prints and digital projections that depict physical encounters between individuals and groups. Holding hands, raised fists held together, several hands grasping each other, a kiss and entangled bodies represent queer forms of affection.
These images were conceived as the set for “Gender Talents: A Special Address” a symposium convened and designed by Carlos Motta, which was held at Tate Modern’s The Tanks on February 2, 2013. The images were projected all around the Tank creating a set and environment for the sessions that asked what is at stake when abandoning or collapsing the gender binary in favor of a more generous understanding of gender and sexuality.
50,8 x 76,2 cm each part of 7
Pigment print on paper
Deviations to Love is a series of 7 prints and digital projections that depict physical encounters between individuals and groups. Holding hands, raised fists held together, several hands grasping each other, a kiss and entangled bodies represent queer forms of affection.
These images were conceived as the set for “Gender Talents: A Special Address” a symposium convened and designed by Carlos Motta, which was held at Tate Modern’s The Tanks on February 2, 2013. The images were projected all around the Tank creating a set and environment for the sessions that asked what is at stake when abandoning or collapsing the gender binary in favor of a more generous understanding of gender and sexuality.
50,8 x 76,2 cm each part of 7
Pigment print on paper
Deviations to Love is a series of 7 prints and digital projections that depict physical encounters between individuals and groups. Holding hands, raised fists held together, several hands grasping each other, a kiss and entangled bodies represent queer forms of affection.
These images were conceived as the set for “Gender Talents: A Special Address” a symposium convened and designed by Carlos Motta, which was held at Tate Modern’s The Tanks on February 2, 2013. The images were projected all around the Tank creating a set and environment for the sessions that asked what is at stake when abandoning or collapsing the gender binary in favor of a more generous understanding of gender and sexuality.
50,8 x 76,2 cm each part of 7
Pigment print on paper
Deviations to Love is a series of 7 prints and digital projections that depict physical encounters between individuals and groups. Holding hands, raised fists held together, several hands grasping each other, a kiss and entangled bodies represent queer forms of affection.
These images were conceived as the set for “Gender Talents: A Special Address” a symposium convened and designed by Carlos Motta, which was held at Tate Modern’s The Tanks on February 2, 2013. The images were projected all around the Tank creating a set and environment for the sessions that asked what is at stake when abandoning or collapsing the gender binary in favor of a more generous understanding of gender and sexuality.
Variable dimensions
5 videos, wooden platforms, carpet
Photo New MuseumWho Feel Differently is a database documentary that addresses critical issues of contemporary queer culture.
Interviews features conversations with fifty queer academicians, activists, artists, radicals, researchers, and others in Colombia, Norway, South Korea and the United States about the histories and development of LGBTIQQ politics in those countries.
Themes outlines five thematic threads drawn from the interviews in the form of a narrative.This section has also been produced as a book.
Journal is a sporadic publication that presents in depth analyses and critiques of LGBTIQQ politics from queer perspectives.The first issue is “Queerly Yours: Thoughts and Afterthoughts on Marriage Equality.”
Ephemera presents documentation of temporary physical exhibitions and events held in different cities- social platforms to discuss queer politics locally.
Variable dimensions
Outdoor garden installation of tropical plants, wood and metal props
“…In order to re-brand the Avenue of the Americas, Carlos Motta with David Sanin Paz (horticulture) created a garden featuring banana trees, passion vines, and other tropical plants from around North and South America shaped to spell out the word: AMERICA’S. This intentional use of the possessive form repositions the exhibition and the Avenue’s plurality (Avenue of the Americas), into a situation of singular ownership. As a living sculpture, this project requires care such as watering and weeding. In the metaphoric sense, this actual maintenance eludes to our own need to upkeep our own ‘America(s)’.
It should also be noted that the plants and soil will be cross-pollinated and “polluted” by bees and wind-carrying seeds from points elsewhere, nurturing an ever growing and developing wild body, depending on what species are accepted. The list of original Pan-American plants are: Solanum Quitoense (Peru and Ecuador), Verbena Bonariensis (Argentina), Dichondra Silver Falls (South East United States of America), Passiflora Kewensis (Brazil), Passiflora Vitifolia (Central America), Passiflora Sunburst (Venezuela), Ipomoea Kniolas Black (American Tropics), Senecio Confusus (Mexico), Agastache Apricot Sunrise (North America), Juncus Effusus ‘Unicorn’ (Eastern United States), Nicotiana Langsdorfii (Brazil)….”
caption written by curator Adam Kleinman for LMCC’s website
Variable dimensions
Outdoor garden installation of tropical plants, wood and metal props
“…In order to re-brand the Avenue of the Americas, Carlos Motta with David Sanin Paz (horticulture) created a garden featuring banana trees, passion vines, and other tropical plants from around North and South America shaped to spell out the word: AMERICA’S. This intentional use of the possessive form repositions the exhibition and the Avenue’s plurality (Avenue of the Americas), into a situation of singular ownership. As a living sculpture, this project requires care such as watering and weeding. In the metaphoric sense, this actual maintenance eludes to our own need to upkeep our own ‘America(s)’.
It should also be noted that the plants and soil will be cross-pollinated and “polluted” by bees and wind-carrying seeds from points elsewhere, nurturing an ever growing and developing wild body, depending on what species are accepted. The list of original Pan-American plants are: Solanum Quitoense (Peru and Ecuador), Verbena Bonariensis (Argentina), Dichondra Silver Falls (South East United States of America), Passiflora Kewensis (Brazil), Passiflora Vitifolia (Central America), Passiflora Sunburst (Venezuela), Ipomoea Kniolas Black (American Tropics), Senecio Confusus (Mexico), Agastache Apricot Sunrise (North America), Juncus Effusus ‘Unicorn’ (Eastern United States), Nicotiana Langsdorfii (Brazil)….”
caption written by curator Adam Kleinman for LMCC’s website
Variable dimensions
Wooden construction, black paper, fluorescent lights
A text and light installation composed of 28 sentences of political graffiti photographed on the streets of several cities. These sentences are cut onto black paper and backlit so that the text is perceived as a shimmer of light. Graffiti of this kind, generally marks the street to transgress it and publicly denounce social injustice, support an ideology or political project or suggest ways to re-claim ownership over “public” space.
But who owns the street: the one that marks it or the one that calls for these sentences to be erased? The installation proposes to ask questions about the meaning of these texts in (private space) and outside (public space).
Video, color and sound
Photo Video stillLeningrad Trilogy presents three distinct paths to travel across Saint Petersburg, considering public space, Soviet Era monuments and architecture as markers of its history. The work is composed of three narrative videos each of which focuses on Saint Petersburg as a contested city, a site of confronted ideologies, a literary muse and a witness of political victory and defeat.
8'
P&B video and sound
Photo Video still“Leningrado” é uma meditação sobre o Leningrado que testemunhou anos de repressão política durante o terror de Stalin. Leituras de dois poemas importantes: o Petrogrado de Anna Akhmatova (1919) e Leningrado de Osip Mandelstam (1930) servem como acompanhamento em áudio para uma vídeo montagem contemplativa capturada na São Petersburgo contemporânea.
44'
Video, color and sound
Photo Still video“Leningrad, Petrograd, Petersburg (Part 1)” is a before-and-after look at landmark cityscapes, based on a 1954 government-published book of photographs of the city. Visiting the city 52 years later, Motta re-photographed each of these locations, revealing changes to Soviet monuments and architecture. The accompanying voiceover is a recorded conversation between curator Elena Sorokina, artist Yevgeniy Fiks, and Carlos Motta in which they respond to the images and the many political, historical and cultural aspects that these invoke. Thirtysix of the location pairings are also made as photographic diptychs, which show a wide spectrum of degree of change over time.
40'
Video, color and sound
Photo Video still“Leningrad, Petrograd, Petersburg (part 2)” presents a series of interviews held around St Petersburg’s two most prominent Soviet Monuments to V.I Lenin. The interviewees respond to a series of questions that attempt to investigate the public perception of these heroic Soviet monuments and how they affect the contemporary landscape of the city fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
30 x 40 cm
C-print
Photo ReproductionInstallation is composed of 36 photo diptychs that depict communist monuments and architecture comparing sites from 1954 and today.
30 x 40 cm
C-print
Photo ReproductionInstallation is composed of 36 photo diptychs that depict communist monuments and architecture comparing sites from 1954 and today.
Dimensions variable
Blackboard and chalk
A Brief History of US Interventions presents an enormous chalkboard, on which is handwritten a brief genealogy of 163 U.S. interventions throughout the world from 1801 until 2006. At the end of the mural is a shelf with chalk and erasers, inviting the viewer to rewrite this history or insert addendums, rationales, excuses, etc. The work was conceived to evolve over time, with an incalculable set of potential outcomes. How much do we know and how much do we care to remember?
Dimensions variable
Blackboard and chalk
A Brief History of US Interventions presents an enormous chalkboard, on which is handwritten a brief genealogy of 163 U.S. interventions throughout the world from 1801 until 2006. At the end of the mural is a shelf with chalk and erasers, inviting the viewer to rewrite this history or insert addendums, rationales, excuses, etc. The work was conceived to evolve over time, with an incalculable set of potential outcomes. How much do we know and how much do we care to remember?
Variable dimensions
Adhesive vinyl on wall and printing on newsprint
Brief History comprises a series of two large-scale mural prints that depict soldiers in situations of war. Additionally the work is composed of two thorough historical timelines: A Brief History of U.S. interventions in Latin America Since 1946 and A Brief History of Leftist Guerrillas in Latin America. These works cover the years of the Cold War (1940s-1990s) and expose on the extreme ideological differences that defined that time. On the one hand, the emphatic rejection communism by the U.S. and the actions that were carried through to prevent its spread, and on the other hand the formation of several dozens of leftists groups that attempted to overthrow the government and to replace it with a Marxist state.
57 x 42 cm each
Print on newsprint
Brief History of US Interventions in Latin America since 1946, 2006 is a newsprint publication that presents a chronology of US interventions in the region. This piece is intended to be taken by the audience free of charge.
12-page letterpress printed accordion book, hand bound, hand-made box, CD-Player, and headphones
This project is composed of a group of installations and one video that use as subject matter The School of the Americas: the controversial US school responsible for the training and education of Latin American soldiers in military strategies, counter-insurgency techniques and warfare tactics since 1946. This project investigates the construction of an ideology of power and domination through rhetorical tactics, field education and economic dependence developed during and after the Cold War. The work employs video, chalk and text/drawings, audio installations, vinyl murals, photographs and newsprint publications to trace and question a genealogy of US interventions in Latin America and its subsequent representation as emblematic of “freedom” and “democracy”. The SOA CYCLE attempts to evidence a dominant anti-social(ist) ideology through the exposure and manipulation of official public speeches, historical material, official documents and news imagery.
101,5 x 101,5 cm
Archival inkjet print
The SOA CYCLE, 2005-2007, is composed of a group of installations and one video that use as subject matter The School of the Americas: the controversial US school responsible for the training and education of Latin American soldiers in military strategies, counter-insurgency techniques and warfare tactics since 1946. This project investigates the construction of an ideology of power and domination through rhetorical tactics, field education and economic dependence developed during and after the Cold War. The work employs video, chalk and text/drawings, audio installations, vinyl murals, photographs and newsprint publications to trace and question a genealogy of US interventions in Latin America and its subsequent representation as emblematic of “freedom” and “democracy”. The SOA CYCLE attempts to evidence a dominant anti-social(ist) ideology through the exposure and manipulation of official public speeches, historical material, official documents and news imagery.
15’36’’
Video color and sound
Photo Video stillLetter to My Father (Standing by the Fence) uses the fence around Ground Zero as a signifier for division and as a consequence of political mismanagement. The work speaks about the socio-emotional impact that the WTC Site has on its visitors. I asked a number of individuals to take a voice recorder to Ground Zero and speak about “what they saw”. The narrative presents the resultant “testimonies” juxtaposed with a text articulated (in first person) by a narrator that asks questions about the dangers of historicizing the present, the meaning of a memorial in a place of big economic projections, the anachronism of a tourism of spectacle and about ideas of nationalism versus a “foreign” identity, based on his experience as an immigrant in the US.
25,5 x 20,5 cm each part of 495
Digital chromogenic prints
Photo courtesy artistPesca Milagrosa is the name given by Colombian guerrillas to their suddenly erected roadblocks on national motorways. There they choose which of the people stopped will be kidnapped with aid of a computer system that researches the victim’s financial capabilities. “Pesca Milagrosa”, 2002-2004 takes this inhumane roulette game as a point of departure to formulate a position in regard to this type of public tragedy common to politically mismanaged societies.
The source photographs for this installation represent faces of the victims of forced disappearances in The Americas. These photographs were digitally appropriated and (some) intentionally manipulated to abstraction. Pesca Misteriosa have been collectively transformed into a political construct, which has deformed the representation of these individuals.
76,2 x 114,3 cm
Archival inkjet print
Photo ReproductionThese photographic self-portraits feature Motta performing fictive characters for the camera in eerie, constructed landscapes. The images depict scenes where his body, sex, and gender are malleable props transformed beyond recognition. In these early photographs, Motta experiments with the representation of sexual alterity, the elasticity of identity, and the politics of difference, unknowingly anticipating the themes that he currently engages in his practice.
114,3 x 76,2 cm
Archival inkjet print
Photo ReproductionThese photographic self-portraits feature Motta performing fictive characters for the camera in eerie, constructed landscapes. The images depict scenes where his body, sex, and gender are malleable props transformed beyond recognition. In these early photographs, Motta experiments with the representation of sexual alterity, the elasticity of identity, and the politics of difference, unknowingly anticipating the themes that he currently engages in his practice.
76,2 x 114,3 cm
Archival inkjet print
Photo ReproductionThese photographic self-portraits feature Motta performing fictive characters for the camera in eerie, constructed landscapes. The images depict scenes where his body, sex, and gender are malleable props transformed beyond recognition. In these early photographs, Motta experiments with the representation of sexual alterity, the elasticity of identity, and the politics of difference, unknowingly anticipating the themes that he currently engages in his practice.
SPIT! wrote a series of queer manifestos that were initially performed at Frieze projects, London. In the 2019 video, Greek artist Despina Zacharopoulos performs WE THE ENEMY, a summary of derogatory slangs and insults to queer people. Spoken by Zacharopoulos with defiant pride, these terms are re-appropriated becoming watchwords or a kind of summoning of the powerless.
_
2019
3’49’’
HD video, 16:9, color, sound
Motta’s multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives and an archivist of repressed histories, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.
Motta was the subject of the survey exhibitions: Carlos Motta. Your Monsters, Our Idols at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, USA; Carlos Motta. Formas de libertad at Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín [MAMM], Colombia (2017) which traveled to Matucana100, Santiago, Chile [2018]; and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love at Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden [2015]. His solo exhibitions at international museums include, The Crossing [2017], Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Histories for the Future [2016], Pérez Art Museum [PAMM], Miami; Réquiem [2016], Museo de Arte Latinoamericano the Buenos Aires – MALBA [2016]; Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… [2015], PinchukArtCentre, Kiev; Gender Talents: A Special Address [2013], Tate Modern, London; La forma de la libertad [2013], Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico; We Who Feel Differently [2012], New Museum, New York; Brief History [2009], MoMA/PS1, New York; and The Good Life [2008], Institute of Contemporary Art [ICA], Philadelphia; among others.
He has participated in the Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo [2016]; Burning Down the House, X Gwangju Biennale [2014]; and Le spectacle du quotidian, X Lyon Biennale [2010]. He won the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise [2017]; the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize [2014]; a Guggenheim Fellowship [2008]; and has received grants from The Art Matters Foundation [2008], The New York State Council for the Arts [2010].
His work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art [MET], New York; The Museum of Modern Art [MoMA], New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona [MACBA]; Museu Fundaçao Serralves, Porto; and Museo de Arte de Banco de la República, Bogotá; among many other institutional, corporate, and private collections.
Carlos Motta [1978, Bogotá, Colômbia] is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program [WISP], New York; he holds a Master in Fine Arts [MFA] from The Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; and a Bachelor in Fine Arts [BFA] from The School of Visual Arts [SVA], New York. Motta was appointed Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt University’s Fine Arts Department in 2019.
Motta’s multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives and an archivist of repressed histories, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.
Motta was the subject of the survey exhibitions: Carlos Motta. Your Monsters, Our Idols at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, USA; Carlos Motta. Formas de libertad at Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín [MAMM], Colombia (2017) which traveled to Matucana100, Santiago, Chile [2018]; and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love at Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden [2015]. His solo exhibitions at international museums include, The Crossing [2017], Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Histories for the Future [2016], Pérez Art Museum [PAMM], Miami; Réquiem [2016], Museo de Arte Latinoamericano the Buenos Aires – MALBA [2016]; Patriots, Citizens, Lovers… [2015], PinchukArtCentre, Kiev; Gender Talents: A Special Address [2013], Tate Modern, London; La forma de la libertad [2013], Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico; We Who Feel Differently [2012], New Museum, New York; Brief History [2009], MoMA/PS1, New York; and The Good Life [2008], Institute of Contemporary Art [ICA], Philadelphia; among others.
He has participated in the Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo [2016]; Burning Down the House, X Gwangju Biennale [2014]; and Le spectacle du quotidian, X Lyon Biennale [2010]. He won the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise [2017]; the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize [2014]; a Guggenheim Fellowship [2008]; and has received grants from The Art Matters Foundation [2008], The New York State Council for the Arts [2010].
His work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art [MET], New York; The Museum of Modern Art [MoMA], New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona [MACBA]; Museu Fundaçao Serralves, Porto; and Museo de Arte de Banco de la República, Bogotá; among many other institutional, corporate, and private collections.
Carlos Motta [1978, Bogotá, Colômbia] is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program [WISP], New York; he holds a Master in Fine Arts [MFA] from The Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; and a Bachelor in Fine Arts [BFA] from The School of Visual Arts [SVA], New York. Motta was appointed Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt University’s Fine Arts Department in 2019.
Carlos Motta
1978. Bogotá
Lives and works in New York
Solo Exhibitions and Projects
2025
– Carlos Motta. Plegàries de resistència – Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Barcelona (MACBA) – Barcelona – Espanha
2024
– Pérez Art Museum: streaming – MIAMI – EUA
– Carlos Motta. Gravidade – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2023
– Jjagɨyɨ: Air of Life – P.P.O.W Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Carlos Motta. Stigmata – Museu de Arte Moderna de Bogotá [MAMBO] – Bogotá – Colômbia
2022
– Carlos Motta e Daniel Correa Mejía. Cuerpos en Gravedad –Mor Charpentier – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Carlos Motta. Your Mosters, Our Idols – Wexner Center for the Arts – Columbus – EUA
– Carlos Motta and Tiamat Legion Medusa. When I Leave this World – OCDChinatown – Nova York – EUA
2021
– Carlos Motta and Jaanus Samma: Otherness, Desire, The Vernacular – Temnikova & Kasela – Tallinn – Estônia
2020
– We Got Each Other’s Back: Carlos Motta and Heldáy de la Cruz and Julio Salgado and Edna Vásquez – Portland Institute forContemporary Art – Portland – EUA
– Carlos Motta: We the Enemy – Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery – University of California Santa Cruz – Santa Cruz – EUA
– For Freedoms – Judd Foundation – Nova York – EUA
– Carlos Motta: Billboard from “50 State Initiative” – Judd Foundation – Nova York – EUA
2019
– Carlos Motta: NÓS, X INIMIGX – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Carlos Motta: Conatus – P.P.O.W Gallery – Nova York – EUA
2018
– Carlos Motta. Deseos – Sala Antonio -Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Carlos Motta. Petrificado – Centro de Arte y Naturaleza – Fundación Beulas, – Huesca – Espanha
– Carlos Motta. Formas de libertad – Centro Cultural Matucana – Santiago – Chile
– Carlos Motta. L’oeuvre du Diable – Mor Charpentier Galerie – Paris – França
– Carlos Motta. Corpo fechado – Galeria Avenida da Índia (EGEAC) – Lisboa – Portugal
2017
– Carlos Motta. Formas de libertad – Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) – Medellín – Colômbia
– Lágrimas – Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional at the Claustro de San Agustín – Bogotá – Colômbia
– The SPIT! Manifesto (with Carlos Motta, John Arthur Peetz e Carlos Maria Romero) – Frieze Projects – Londres – Inglaterra
– The Crossing – Stedelijk Museum – Amsterdam – Holnada
– Desviaciones – Centro Cultural Gabriel García Márquez – Embaixada da Colômbia – Madri – Espanha
– Carlos Motta. Hordaland Art Center – Bergen – Noruega
2016
– Beloved Martina – Mercer Union – Toronto – Canadá
– Deviations – PPOW Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Requiem (Performance) – Tenuta dello Scompiglio – Vorno – Itália
– Histories for the Future – Pérez Art Museum (PAMM) – Miami – EUA
– Requiem – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) – Buenos Aires – Argentina
2015
– For Democracy There Must Be Love – Röda Sten Konsthall – Gothenburg – Suécia
– Désirs – Mor Charpentier Galerie – Paris – França
– Patriots, Citizens, Lovers (Main Prize of the Future Generation Art Prize 2014) – PinchukArtCentre – Kiev – Ucrânia
2014
– Nefandus Trilogy – Galeria Filomena Soares (Solo Projects ARCO) – Madri – Espanha
– Nefandus – El Túnel Arte Alternativo – Cuenca – Equador
2013
– Gender Talents: A Special Address – The Tanks – Tate Modern – Londres – Inglaterra
– The Movers (with Matthias Sperling) – The Tanks – Tate Modern – Londres – Inglaterra
– Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer: a Performative Symposium (com Jared Gilbert) – The Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice – Union Theological Seminary – Nova York – EUA
– La forma de la libertad – Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (Projeto fachada) – Cidade do México – México
– Nefandus – Galeria Filomena Soares – Lisboa – Portugal
– La visión de los vencidos – Galeria La Central – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Ritual of Queer Rituals (com AA Bronson) – Witte de With – Rotterdam – Holanda
– La visión de los vencidos (Pinta Video) – Y Gallery at Pinta NY – Nova York – EUA
2012
– Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently – Museum as Hub – New Museum – Nova York – EUA
2011
– Deus Pobre: Modern Sermons of Communal Lament – Y Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– The Future Lasts Forever (com Runo Lagomarsino) – Gävle Konstcentrum – Gävle – Suécia
– Broken English (com Julieta Aranda) – Performa 11 – Nova York – EUA
– A New Discover: Queer Immigration in Perspective (com Queerocracy) Risk e Reward Series – Museum of Art and Design – Nova York – EUA
– Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public (com Joshua Lubin-Levy) – Forever & Today – Nova York – EUA
– Normativo – Espacio de Arte Contemporaneo – Museo de La Tertulia – Cali – Colômbia
– We Who Feel Differently – Visningsrommet USF – Bergen – Noruega
– The Good Life and Six Acts: An Experiment in Narrative Justice – Wiener FestWochen – Viena – Áustria
2010
– Six Acts: An Experiment in Narrative Justice – Museo de Arte del Banco de la República – El Parqueadero – Bogotá – Colômbia
– The Good Life and Six Acts: An Experiment in Narrative Justice – Hebbel Am Ufer (HAU) – Berlim – Alemanha
– We Who Feel Differently – Other Gallery – Xangai – China
2009
– Brief History – MoMA/PS1 – Long Island – EUA
– La Buena Vida/The Good Life – Fundación Alzate Avendaño – Bogotá – Colômbia
– La Buena Vida/The Good Life – Smack Mellon – Nova York – EUA
– La Buena Vida/The Good Life – Festival Fabbrica Europa – Florença – Itália
– The Immigrant Files: Democracy Is Not Dead, It Just Smells Funny – Konsthall C – Estocolmo – Suécia
– The Immigrant Files: Democracy Is Not Dead, It Just Smells Funny – Baltic Art Center (BAC) – Visby – Suécia
2008
– La Buena Vida/The Good Life – Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) – Filadélfia – EUA
– La Buena Vida/The Good Life – Art in General – Nova York – EUA
– The People… – Johannesburg Art Gallery – Joanesburgo – África do Sul
– The People… – KZNSA Gallery – Durban – Kwazulu Natal – África do Sul
2007
– Leningrad Trilogy – Winkleman Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– The Good Life (Installation Sketch # 3) and Other Works in Progress – Lower Manhattan Cultural Council – Nova York – EUA
2006
– The Good Life (Installation Sketch # 1) – rum46 – Aarhus – Dinamarca
– SOA: Black & White Tales – Kevin Bruk Gallery at bâleLatina – Basiléia – Suíça
– SOA: Black & White Tales – Kevin Bruk Gallery – Miami – EUA
2004
– Bury them and keep quiet – Alliance Française – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Ese Algo que Somos – Alonso Garcés Galería – Bogotá – Colômbia
– The Missing Series – Kevin Bruk Gallery – Miami – EUA
2002
– Pesca Milagrosa – La Corte Arte Contemporanea – Florença – Itália
Group shows
2024
– Mirror of the Mind: Figuration in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection – El Espacio 23/ Jorge M. Pérez Collection – Miami – EUA
– Histórias da diversidade LGBTQIA+ – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Scientia Sexualis – Pacific Standard Time at ICA LA – Los Angeles – EUA
– Zelo – PAMMTV e ArtRio (online)
– Unclaimed Experience – Springs Projects – Brooklyn – EUA
– Cuir Sou: Notas sobre afetividade – Verve Galeria – São Paulo – Brasil
– L’ecriture ou la vie – Mor Charpentier – Paris – França
– Disobedience Archive a project by Marco Scotini. 60th International Art Exhibition. Stranieri ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere. La Biennale, Veneza, Itália
– Flagging The Circle, Queer|Art|Pride – Sargent’s Daughters – Nova York – EUA
– Pride at BAK: Queer Film Program – Basis voor Actuele Kunst (BAK) – Utrecht – Holanda
– I am a thousand different people. Everyone is real – Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art – New York – EUA
– TONO – Festival de Performance, Música y Videoarte – Cidade do México – México
– Constelaciones e Insurrecciones Tropicales – Centro Cultural Gabriel García Márquez – Madri – Espanha
– 2.0 – Galeria Filomena Soares – Lisboa – Portugal
– International Short Film Competition: 37th Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media – Stuttgart – Alemanha
– El Dorado: Myths of Gold – Americas Society – Nova York – EUA
– Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections – Fleming Museum of Art – Burlington – Vermont – EUA
– Seeing Through Stone – San Jose Museum of Art and Institute of Art and Sciences – Santa Cruz – EUA
– Silencios postcoloniales -Museo Casa Natal del General Santander – Cúcuta – Colômbia
2023
– The Cult of Beauty – Wellcome Collection – Londres – Inglaterra
– Signals: How Video Transformed the World – The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) – Nova York – EUA
– Sembrar las Dudas: Indicios sobre la representación Indígena en Colombia – Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU) – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Transgressive, Transnational, Transgender: A Night of Global Queer Cinema – Perversité – Montreal – Canadá
– KFFK/Kurzfilmfestival Köln 17 – Colônia – Alemanha
– Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau with Nadia Granados, Natalia Escobar and Carlos Motta – Museum of Modern Art – Berlim – Alemanha
– After That Blue – Fragment Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Love? – Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum – Colônia – Alemanha
– Charming for the Revolution, Transitions Film Festival – Maastricht – Holanda
– Una historia (no tan) rosa – ARKHÉ – Madri – Espanha
– German Competition – 69th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen – Oberhausen – Alemanha
– The Cult of Beauty – Wellcome Collection – Londres – Inglaterra
2022
– Macho: Representing Masculinity – Another Space – Nova York – EUA
– Is it morning for you yet? The 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA
– Eros Rising: Visions of the Erotic in Latin American Art – Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) – Nova York – EUA
– Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities – Tufts University Art Galleries – Boston – EUA
– Historic Sight – Gallery Closed – Pittsburgh – EUA
– This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection – Haus der Kulturen der Welt – Berlim – Alemanha
– Disobedience Archive (Ders Bitti) – 17th Istanbul Biennial – Istambul – Turquia
– The Cinema of Gender Transgression: Trans Film Series: Exuberance as Process – Anthology Film Archives – Nova York – EUA
– Letters from Overseas; Zooming into De Molina’s Collection – Coral Gables Museum – Miami – EUA
– National Competition of Experimental Shorts – Bogoshorts – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Nada fluye como el río – Asociación del Teatro Caracol – Vigo – Espanha
– Fine Arts Faculty/Staff Exhibition Series – The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery – Pratt Institute – Nova York – EUA
– Apuntes maricas – Oficina de Investigaciones Patafisicas – Cidade do México – México
– The Oceans and the Interpreters – Hong-Gah Museum – Taipei – Taiwan
– Together – Interact, Interplay, Interfere – Kunst Meran Merano Arte – Merano, Itália
– Y de pronto no había más orilla – Il Posto – Santiago – Chile
2021
– Skin in the Game – Palm Heights – Miami Beach – EUA
– Intervenciones contemporâneas – Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) – Lima – Peru
– Counter Encounters, Art of the Real – Film at Lincoln Center – Nova York – EUA
– Terra Nostra – Mor Charpentier – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Incandescences: Regarding the Passage of Electrical Energy Through Solid Bodies – ArteBA – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Transfronteras y temporalidades amazónicas – Centro Cultural de España – La Paz – Bolívia
– Recovery – P·P·O·W – Nova York – EUA
– Kindred Solidarities: Queer Community and Chosen Families – The 8th Floor – Nova York – EUA
– Wandamba yalungka…/Winds change direction. Performa – Nova York – EUA
– American Boy – Mor Charpentier (online)
– And If I Devoted My Life To One of Its Feathers? – Kunsthalle Wien – Viena – Áustria
– Off the Record – The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum – Nova York – EUA
– STOA169: The Artist Column Hall in Polling – Polling – Alemanha
– Un deseo tan fluído como el Mar – Museo Marítimo de Barcelona – Barcelona – Espanha
– Das dritte Geschlecht – A.K.T – Pforzheim – Alemanha
– Ires y venires: Diálogos en torno a la colección de Arte del Banco de la República – Casa Republicana de la Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Pantalla abierta. Obras de la colección MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) – Barcelona – Espanha
– Shoreline Movements – Taipei Fine Arts Museum – Taipei Biennial – Taipei – Taiwan
2020
– All The Love – Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje – Skopje – Macedônia
– The Crack Begins Within: 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art – Berlim – Alemanha
– Viaje hacia la luz – Aninat Galería – Santiago – Chile
– De Voz a Voz – Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) – Bogotá – Colômbia
– In Plain Sight, National Intervention on July 4th throughout the U.S.
– Not Over. Visual AIDS – Nova York – EUA
– Art at a Time Like This – artatatimelikethis.com (online)
– Hell is a Place on Earth. Heaven is a Place in Your Head – P·P·O·W – Nova York, NY (online)
– As Soon As If It Was Not, LOOP—Barcelona (online)
– 12a Taipei Biennial – Taipei Fine Arts Museum – Taiwan
– Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections – Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum – East Lansing – EUA
– When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art – Minneapolis Institute of Arts – Minneapolis; Iris and Gerald B. Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University – Stanford – EUA
– Radical Hope – Mor Charpentier – Paris, – França
– We We First Arrived… – The Corner at Whitman-Walker – Washington D.C. – EUA
2019
– Soft Power – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) – San Francisco – EUA
– Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections – Independent Curators International (ICI), Touring 2019-2023
– United by AIDS—An Exhibition about Loss, Remembrance, Activism, and Art in Response to HIV/AIDS – Migros Museum – Zurique – Suíça
– When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art – The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) – Boston – EUA
– BOFFO Fire Island Performance Festival 2019 (with SPIT!) – Fire Island – EUA
– BOTH/AND – The Box – Nova York – EUA
– The Present Is Not Enough – Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) – Berlim – Alemanha
– Territorio común. Nuevas incorporaciones a la Colección MAMM – Museo de Arte Moderno Medellín – Medelin – Colômbia
– Listening as Practice, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai – Mumbai – India
– Home is a Foreign Place. Recent Acquisitions in Context – Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) – New York – EUA
– About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and the New Queer – Wrightwood 659 –Chicago – EUA
– Under Construction. Relatos desde Latinoamérica en la Colección CIFO – Fundación Fugaz – Lima – Peru
– La naturaleza de las cosas: Humboldt, idas y venidas – Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Rivers Flow Out of My Eyes – tagenboschvanvreden – Amsterdam – Holanda
– Pasado tiempo futuro: Arte en Colombia en el siglo XXI – Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) – Medelin – Colômbia
– Transamerica/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today – McNay Art Museum – San Antonio – EUA
– Entrecruce latinoamericano—Travestismo cultural – Galeria Isabel Aninat – Santiago – Chile
– De-colombianity Now! Videocañonazos del Post-conflicto. Vol 3. Colombian videoart on Post-Conflict & Utopia, Panorama Colombia, the Colombian Film Festival of Berlim – Alemanha
– Amazonías – Matadero – Madri – Espanha
– Portadores de Sentido–Arte contemporáneo en la Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros – Museo Amparo – Puebla – México
– A Decolonial Atlas: Strategies in Contemporary Art of the Americas – Mandeville Gallery at Union College – Nova York – EUA
2018
– 50 States, 50 Billboards, FOR FREEDOMS – EUA
– Mark for Redaction – Flux Factory – Nova York – EUA
– Territorios que importan. Género, arte y ecologia – Centro de Arte y Naturaleza (CDAN) – Fundación Beulas – Huesca – Espanha
– Debes seguir. No puedo seguir. Seguiré. (with SPIT!) – Espacio Odeón – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Estados migratórios – Centro Cultural de España – Lima – Peru
– 7º Festival de Cine La Orquídia – Cuenca – Equador
– Habitación compartida – Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU) – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Dialogues in Time: Charting Genealogies and Intersections of Gender – ArtBO – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Don’t believe their lies: 4 Contemporary artists from Colombia: An Initiative of Thibault Poutrel – Claustro de San Agustín – Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia – Bogotá – Colômbia
– A group exhibition with work by Dora García, Sharon Hayes, Mahmoud Khaled, Emily Jacir, Carlos Motta, Wu Tsang, and Akram Zaatari, as well as a letter by Quinn Latimer – Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art – Rotterdam – Holanda
– Tradiciones subvertidas: hacia una etnografía queer – La Casa Encendida – Madri – Espanha
– I SEE YOU – Savannah College of Art and Design – Savannah – EUA
– UTOPIAS – Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito – Ecuador
– Verbo 2018 (14a mostra de performance arte) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Cast of Characters: An Immersive Installation by Liz Collins Featuring Portraits by 100 LGBTQ Artists – Bureau of General Services, Queer Division – Nova York – EUA
– Enchanted Bodies / Fetish for Freedom – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo (GAMeC) – Bergamo – Itália
– Landscapes After Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime – Grey Art Gallery NYU – Nova York – EUA
– In the Name Of…, LATINX LGBTQ FESTIVAL, Fuerza Fest New York – Julia de Burgos Cultural Center – Nova York – EUA
– Part of the Continuum – Sion-St. Peter’s Church – Nova York – EUA
– Video “cañonazos” of Post-Conflict. Colombian Video Art on Utopia & Post-conflict. Vol 2. The Colombian Film Festival in Berlin: PANORAMA COLOMBIA, Berlim – Alemanha
– Germen: Ediciones Popolet – Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo – Brasil
– Queer Tropics – Transformer – Washington D.C. – EUA
– Ensaios do Outro Mundo – Acervo Histórico Videobrasil, OLHO Video Festival. Cineteatro São Luiz, Fortaleza; and Cinemateca, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Campo a través. Arte colombiano en la colección del Banco de la República – Sala Alcalá 31 – Madri – Espanha
– The Words We Won’t Say: Works from the Collection of Thibault Poutrel – Residencia de la Embajada de Colombia – Madri – Espanha
– Unfinished Portrait – Mor Charpentier Galerie – Paris – França
– Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (with SPIT!), Weekends – Paris – França
– Section 28 Tribute Night. 30 years on – Queer Tours of London8 (with SPIT!)
Beyond The Binary, Lomography – Londres – Inglaterra
– Queer Cafe at Lush – Summit – – Londres – Inglaterra (with SPIT!)
Talking HIV Stigma During Stick It To Stigma – Canvas Café – – Londres – Inglaterra (with SPIT!)
– Names Printed in Black – LACE – Los Angeles – EUA
– A Decolonial Atlas: Strategies in Contemporary Art of the Americas – Tufts University Art Gallery – Medford, EUA
2017
– Exquisite Corpse: Moving Image in Latin American and Asian Art – Mana Wyndham – Miami – EUA
– The Words We Won’t Say: Four Contemporary Artists from Colombia: An Initiative of Thibault Poutrel – Mana Wynwood – Miami – EUA
– Queer Tropics – Pelican Bomb Gallery X – Nova Orleans- EUA
– Working for the Future Past – Seoul Museum of Art Seosomun Building – Seoul – Coréia do Sul
– Council Presents: The Against Nature Journal. Contour Biennale 8 – Mechelen – Bélgica
– Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia – Morelia – México
– Sex, Lies, and Videotapes. POMADA 7 Queer Festival – Varsóvia – Polônia
– Histórias da sexualidade Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Tracing Trajectories: Selections from the Hoggard/Wagner Collection – Trestle Projects – Nova York – EUA
– Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA: Video Art in Latin America – LAXART – Los Angeles – EUA
– Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA: Guatemala from 33,000 km: Contemporary Art from 1960—Present – Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara – Santa Barbara – EUA
– Selections from the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo – Incerteza Viva – Museo de Arte Moderno (MAMBO) – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Over the Rainbow – Praz-Delavallade Gallery – Los Angeles – EUA
– Visual Notes for an Upside-Down World – P.P.O.W Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Os corpos são as obras – Despina – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Fragile State – PinchukArtCentre – Kiev – Ucrânia
– After the Fact. Propaganda 2001-2017 – Lenbachhaus – Munique – Alemanha
– Dixit: rro. ArteBA – La Ruaral – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– 89 Noches: Descolonizando la sexualidad y la oscuridad – Museo de Antioquia – Medelin – Colômbia
– 2nd Chiangjiang International Biennale of Photography and Video Art – Changjiang Museum of Contemporary Art – Changjiang – China
– We’re Happy Here in the Happy House – Proyecto Amil – Lima – Peru
– CANIBALIA (Redux) – Hangar – Lisboa – Portugal
– Universo holograma – Museo La Tertulia – Cali – Colômbia
– A Decolonial Atlas: Strategies in Contemporary Art of the Americas – Vincent Price Art Museum – Monterey – EUA
– Revisiones: Obras contemporáneas en la colección del MALI – Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) – Peru
2016
– 20 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur – Winterthur – Suíça
– Forumdoc.bh – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Invideo 2016 – 26th International Exhibition of Video and Cinema Beyond – Milão – Itália
– Luststreifen – Queer Film Festival Basel – Neues Kino e Kult.kino Basel – Basiléia – Suíça
– 20th Anniversary Show – Smack Mellon – Nova York – EUA
– Lo que se ve no se pregunta – Centro Cultural de España en México – Cidade do México
– Dissent: What They Fear is the Light – LACE – Los Angeles – EUA
– Time-based Art Festival (TBA):16 – Portland Institute of Contemporary Art – Portland – EUA
– 32ª Bienal de São Paulo: Incerteza Viva – Pavilhão da Bienal – São Paulo – Brasil
– The Morality Reflex – Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) – Vilnius – Lituânia
– The Revolution Will Not Be Grey – Aspen Art Museum – Aspen – EUA
– FUSO 2016 – Anual de Vídeo Arte Internacional de Lisboa – Lisboa – Portugal
– O que vem com a aurora – Casa Triângulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Muestra de Cine Queer Colombiano: Experiencias Cinematográficas Sexodisidentes – Fundación Cineteca Pública – Centro Cultura del Oriente – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Labor Relations – Wrocław Contemporary Museum – Wrocław – Polônia
– Dissonance (Screening) – Getty Museum (Harold Williams Auditorium) – Los Angeles – EUA
– Landscapes After Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime – Hall Art Foundation – Reading – EUA
– The 11th Xposed International Queer Film Festival – Berlim – Alemanha
– ‘O GAFA FA’ASIPA (Queer Genealogies) – Gertrude Contemporary, Emerging Curators’ Program – Next Wave Festival – Melbourne – Austrália
– Borders, Barriers, Walls – Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) – Melbourne – Austrália
– ConTexto: Palabra, escritura y narración en el arte contemporâneo – Museo Universidad de Antioquia (MUUA) – Medelín – Colômbia
– Lembre-se de lembrar – Carbono Galeria – São Paulo – Brasil
– (SIGNAL) – Smack Mellon – Nova York – EUA
– Do Ask, Do Tell: Male Homoerotic Art from Latin America (1970s- 2016) – Henrique Faria Fine Arts – Nova York – EUA
– The Anthropophagic Banquet (Screening) – Instituto das Artes – Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– <Barthes, mon amour> – La ONG – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– As Long As It Takes: Short – 45th International Film Festival Rotterdam – Rotterdam – Holanda
– Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today – Museo Jumex – Cidade do México – México
– Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today – South London Gallery – Londres – Inglaterra
– Memorias imborrables – Laboratorio de Arte Alameda – Cidade do México – México
2015
– Resistance Performed – Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst – Zurique – Suíça
– A Strangely Glorious Opportunity. Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest – Londres – Inglaterra
– 23º Festival Mix Brasil de Cultura de Diversidade – São Paulo – Brasil
– MDE15 Encuentro Internacional de Arte de Medellín: Histórias Locales/Prácticas Globales – Museo de Antioquia – Medelín – Colômbia
– Then & Now: Ten Years of Residencies at The Center for Book Arts – The College of New Rochelle – Castle Gallery – New Rochelle – EUA
– Queer Lisboa – 19. Festival Internacional de Cinema Queer – Lisboa – Portugal
– A Story Within A Story… 8th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2015 – Gotemburgo – Suécia
– Memorias imborrables – Museu de Arte Latino-Americana de Buenos Aires (MALBA) – Buenos Aires – Argentina; Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (MARCO); Museum Angewandte Kunst (MAK), B3 Biennal of the Moving Image – Frankfurt – Alemanha
– Les Rencontres Internationales – Berlim 2015 – Haus der Kulturen der Welt – Berlim – Alemanha
– Japanese Nightingale Doesn’t Sing At Night – XYZ Collective – Tóquio – Japão
– Acting on Dreams. The State of Immigrant Rights, Conditions, and Advocacy in the US – Franklin Street Works – Stamford – EUA
– Discovery Award Exhibition – LOOP Barcelona 2015 – Antigua Fábica Estrella Damm – Barcelona – Espanha
– Orde Baru OK. Video – Indonesia Media Arts Festival – Galeri Nasional Indonesia – Jakarta – Indonésia
– DIXIT: El mundo tal como es y el mundo como podría ser – ArteBA – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Cannibale, ou le Musée Anthropophage – Le Musée de la Chase et de la Nature – Paris – França
– 12th Queer City Cinema International Film Festival – Regina – Canadá
– Frente à Euforia – Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade – São Paulo – Brasil
– Ident-Alter-ity. 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art – State Museum of Contemporary Art – Thessaloniki – Grécia
– Wild Noise: Artwork from The Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes – Havana – Cuba
– The 10th Xposed International Queer Film Festival – Berlim – Alemanha
– The Manufacturing of Rights: Beirut – Ashkal Alwan – Beirut – Líbano
– Then & Now: Ten Years of Residencies at The Center For Book Arts – Nova York – EUA
– Natural Beginners – Nuvolari – Paris – França
– Ejercicios de traslado: colecciones 9915 – Centro de Arte Alcobendas – Madri – Espanha
– 6 Proyecciones – Casa América – Madri – Espanha
– Encrucijadas//Encruzilhadas: Corpos, Corpus, Corpses, Dialogues for Latin American Cinemas. NYU Department of Cinema Studies – Michelson Theater – Nova York – EUA
– NUMUteca: libre – Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Guatemala – Cidade da Guatemala – Guatemala
– Ornament (com Amy Siegel) – Simon Preston Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Wave & Particle – Ronald Feldman Fine Arts – Nova York – EUA
– FOKUS 2015 Video Art Festival – Nikolaj Kunsthal – Copenhague – Dinamarca
– Rip It! – Theater Freiburg e Museum für Neue Kunst – Freiburg – Alemanha
2014
– Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films – International Film Festival Rotterdam – Rotterdam – Holanda
– #1: Cartagena – The First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias – Cartagena – Colômbia
– QP5 El cuerpo queer, la construcción de la memoria (Zanele Muholi e Carlos Motta) – Arte Actual FLACSO – Quito – Equador
– 7.000.000 – Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló – Castelló – Espanha
– Micro-acciones de emergencia # 3 – ADN Platform – Barcelona – Espanha
– I see in the Sea Nothing Except the Sea. I don’t See a Dove. I don’t See a Shore – The Camera Club of Nova York – Nova York – EUA
– La noche del apagón – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) – Barcelona – Espanha
– Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today – Guggenheim Museum – Nova York – EUA
– Festival de Cine Ciclo Rosa – Cinemateca Distrital – Bogotá; Centro ColomboAmericano, Medelín – Colômbia
– IBAFF – Festival Internacional de Cine de Murcia – Murcia – Espanha
– Festival Internacional de Cine Asterisco – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Transvisible – 19 Bienal de Arte Paiz – Cidade da Guatemala – Guatemala
– Colonia apócrifa – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) – León – Espanha
– Bellos Jueves – Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– European Short Films Competition – New Horizons International Film Festival – Wroclaw – Polônia
– Sinopale 5 – International Sinnop Biennale – Turquia
– Realidades en Conflicto – Espacio Artnexus – Bogotá – Colômbia
– PORT – Galerij Verbeeck Van Dyck – Antwerp Queer Arts Festival – Antuérpia – Bélgica
– By Invitation Only – Instant HERLEV Institute – Copenhague – Dinamarca
– 5 Years, 6 Works, 7 Artists – LOOP Awards 2010-2014 – Fuso Lisboa – Lisboa – Portugal
– Después de lo anterior – Galería Santa Fe – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Memórias Inapagáveis – Sesc Pompeia – São Paulo – Brasil
– The Unwritten – Marres House for Contemporary Culture – Maastricht – Holanda
– Burning Down the House – 10th Gwangju Biennale – Gwangju – Coréia do Sul
– EVAKUIEREN (com Camilo Godoy) – Mousonturm – Frankfurt – Alemanha
– Inventer le possible – Vidéothèque éphémère 2 – Jeu de Paume – Paris – França
– 16ª Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá – Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Salón de Belleza in Utopian Pulse – Flares in the Darkroom – Secession – Viena – Áustria
– Evidencias de los hechos – Adquisiciones recientes – Museo de Arte del Banco de la República – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Future Generation Art Prize – PinchukArtCentre – Kiev – Ucrânia
– Migraciones: género, economía, poscolonialismo – Galería de Arte del Palacio Municipal – Puebla – México
– Rencontres Internationales a Paris – Gaîté Lyrique – Paris – França
2013
– global aCtIVISm – Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM) – Karlsruhe – Alemanha
– The Temptation of AA Bronson – Witte de With – Rotterdam – Holanda
– Erinnerungsfelder / Campos de memoria – Galerie Ratskeller – Berlim – Alemanha
– Carlos Motta – Zachary Drucker – Sopheak Sao – Where Dreams Cross – Estocolmo – Suécia
– Wavelenghts Program – Toronto International Film Festival – Toronto – Canadá
– Disobedience Archive – Castello di Rivoli – Torino – Itália
– Fractured Spaces – Flaherty NYC Film Festival – Nova York – EUA
– Ideas y Presupuestos, jugada a 3 bandas – Galeria Liebre – Madri – Espanha
– Intersections – Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) – Long Beach – EUA
– Without Reality there is no Utopia – Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – San Francisco – EUA
2012
– Battleground States – Utah Museum of Contemporary Art – Salt Lake City – EUA
– From Below, As a Neighbor – Drugo More – Rijeka – Croácia
– Ciclo Rosa 2012 – Cinemateca Distrital e Galería Santa Fé – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Required Reading: Printed Material as Agent of Intervention – Center for Book Arts – Nova York – EUA
– Contested Territories – Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs – Long Island City – EUA
– Salvajes – Traneudstillingen Exhibition Space – Hellerup – Dinamarca
– Latin America: Between Identity and Mask – Art Stays International Festival of Contemporary Art – Ptuj – Eslovênia
– III Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan – San Juan – Porto Rico
– Ñew York: Latin American and Spanish Artists in Nova York – Art Museum of the Americas – Washington DC – EUA
2011
– Found in Translation – Guggenheim Museum – Nova York – EUA
– The Air We Breathe – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – San Francisco – EUA
– The Walls that Divide Us – Apexart – Nova York – EUA
– Modo de empleo 3: desobedecer a toda costa, video y manifestaciones – Museo Carrillo Gil – Cidade do México – Mèxico
– The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection – George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film – Rochester – EUA
– Sin realidad no hay utopia – Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo – Sevilha – Espanha
– InSite: Art + Commemoration – Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (Online) – Nova York – EUA
– Patria o Libertad! – Cobra Museum – Amstelveen – Holanda; Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art –Toronto – Canadá
– Multiple, Limited, Unique – Center for Book Arts – Nova York – EUA
– Drawn to Disaster – Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art – Portland – EUA
– Motion of a Nation – VM21 Arte Contemporanea – Roma – Itália
– Aesthetic Justice – The Lambent Foundation – Nova York – EUA
– Boundaries: selections from the MOLAA Permanent Collection – Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) – Long Beach – EUA
– Stuttgart Filmwinter – Stuttgart – Alemanha
2010
– To the Arts Citizens! – Museu Serralves – Porto – Portugal
– Notes on Memories – IG Bildende Kunst, Viena – Áustria
– smart – Miami Dade College at The Freedom Tower – Miami – EUA
– Second World Congress of Free Artists, Aarhus Kunstbygning – Aarhus – Dinamarca
– 27th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival – Kassel – Alemanha
– How To Do Things With Words – Parsons School of Design – Nova York – EUA
– The Politics of Art – National Museum of Contemporary Art – Atenas – Grécia
– The Creative Act – Henie Onstad Kunstsenter – Oslo – Noruega
– Dwelling-in-Travel – Art Today Association – Center for Contemporary Art – Plovdiv -Bulgária
– Kabul, Jenin, Tehran… – MIT List Visual Arts Center – Cambridge – Inglaterra
– 2nd “Qui Vive?” – Moscow International Biennale for Young Art – Museum of Modern Art – Moscou – Rússia
– The Mobile Archive-Stacion- Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina – Prishtina – Kosovo
– The Art of War – CEPA Gallery – Buffalo – EUA
– Avenue of the Americas – LMCC Lent Space – Nova York – EUA
– 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) – Roterdam – Holanda
– Geography of Trans-territories – Walter and McBean Galleries – San Francisco Art Institute – San Francisco – EUA
– Biennale Cuvee 10 – OK Center for Contemporary Art – Linz – Áustria
2009
– Le spectacle du quotidian – Xème Biennale de Lyon – Lyon – França
– Matrix: The Unstable Reality, 28 Biennial of Graphic Arts – Ljubijana – Eslovênia
– Conversation Pieces – CEPA Gallery – Buffalo – EUA
– 5x5Castelló – Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló (EACC) – Castellón – Espanha
– Turn on, Tune in, Drop out – Beijing 798 Biennale 2009 – Beijing – China
– Feedforward: The Angel of History – LABoral Art Center – Gijón – Espanha
– The 21st Century, The Feminine Century, and the Century of Diversity and Hope – International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale – Incheon – Coréia do Sul
– NO SOUL FOR SALE – A Festival of Independents (com Miguel Amado, Filipa Oliveira e Migrating Forms) – X Initiative – Nova York – EUA
– Special Editions – Lower East Side Printshop – Nova York – EUA
– Turn On – Slag Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Biennale Democrazia – Torino – Itália
– t.error – Hungarian Cultural Institute – Nova York – EUA
– Things Fall Apart – Winkleman Gallery – Nova York – EUA
2008
– Soft Manipulation, or who is Afraid of The New Now? – Casino Luxembourg – Luxemburgo; Stiftelsen 314 – Bergen – Noruega
– The Prisoner’s Dilemma – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation – Miami – EUA
– Archivo Sur – Futura – Praga – República Tcheca
– Alternating Beats – RISD Art Museum – Providence – EUA
– European Social Forum (ESF) Screening Program – Mälmo – Suécia
– Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding – Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons -Nova York – EUA
– The Greenroom – CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art – Annandale-on-Hudson – EUA
– Wild Horses – Art Space Diffusion138 – University of Grenoble – Grenoble – França
– The Long Distance Runner – Den Frie Udstillingsbygning – Copenhague – Dinamarca
– Festival International d’Art Video de Casablanca – Casablanca – Marrocos
– Troublemakers – Magazzini del Salle Punta della Dogana – Veneza – Itália
– Night School – New Museum – Nova York – EUA
– In the Private Eye – ISE Foundation – Nova York – EUA
2007
– Open House with Open Studios – IASPIS – Estocolmo – Suécia
– Infinitu et Contini – Smack Mellon Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Timeline: Human Speed and Technology Speed – Korea Cultural Service China – Hong Kong
– EXPOSURE – Rotunda Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Making Good Luck – Y Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Pawnshop – e-flux projects – Nova York – EUA
– Atlante Latinoamericano – Centro de las Artes Conarte [no âmbito do Fórum Internacional das Culturas] – Monterrey – México
– Tollé…Toleránce (Screening), Images Citoyennes – Festival International de la Vidéo – Liége – Bélgica
– Unmarked Categories (com Homework) – K2 – Yzmir – Istanbul – Istambul – Turquia
– Challengers! art-e-conomy Selected Video Screening – Laboratorio Occupato Morion – Veneza – Itália
– Symbiotic/Synergy: Selections from The Center for Book Arts Community – Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts – Chicago – EUA
– Carte Blanche á Heure Exquise! (Screening) – International Short Film Festival Oberhausen – Oberhausen – Alemanha
– in someone else’s skin – CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art – Annandale-on-Hudson – EUA
– The Karma of War (Screening) – Wang Center – Stony Brook University – Stony Brook – EUA
– Oog-Eye – Foam Fotografiemuseum – Amsterdam – Holanda
– Recorridos y Video Proyecciones durante ARCO – ArtBus – Madri – Espanha
– System Error: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning – Palazzo delle Papesse – Siena – Itália
2006
– Estrecho Dudoso – TEOR/éTica – San José – Costa Rica
– Ohne Blick – Musée de ElyséeLausanne – Lausanne – Suíça
– pa.per.ing – Art in General at Deutsche Bank – Nova York – EUA
– Festival des Cinémas Différents de Paris (Screening) – Centre Culturel La Clef – Paris – França
– Estudio Abierto – Palacio de Correos – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– 10 Defining Experiments: CIFO 2006 Grant Program Recipients – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation – Miami – EUA
– Manifesta 6 School (Cancelled) – Manifesta 6 – Nicosia – Chipre
– Prevailing Climate (Screening) – Sara Meltzer Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– 3 Biennale Adriatica di Arti Nuove – San Benedetto del Tronto – Itália
– Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program Exhibition – Chelsea Museum, Nova York – EUA
– El Museo’s 4th Bienal: The (S) Files – Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico – San Juan – Puerto Rico
– 4ème Festival International du Cinéma Iranien en Exil (Screening) – Art en Exil – Paris – França
– When Artists Say We – Artists Space – Nova York – EUA
– Bzzzz – Fundacion Cultural Cu4Rto Nivel Arte Contemporaneo – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Russia: Significant Other – ICA at the Anna Akhmatova Museum – St Petersburg – Rússia
– Surveillance – Jersey City Museum – Jersey City – EUA
– Moving Time – Gallery Korea – Korean Cultural Service – Nova York – EUA
– Featured Artist Projects – The Center for Book Arts – Nova York – EUA
2005
– El Salón de la Justicia – Galería Santa Fé – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Co-dependent (com Julieta Aranda) – College of Arts and Letters – Florida Atlantic University – Miami – EUA
– New Vectors. Panoramas do Sul – 15º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica Videobrasil – Sesc Pompeia – São Paulo – Brasil
– BEOGRAD NEKAD I SAD – Prodajna galerija “Beograd” – Belgrado – Sérvia
– El Museo’s 4th Bienal: The (S) Files – El Museo – Nova York – EUA
– Enemy Image – Momenta Art – Nova York – EUA
– Se acabó el rollo? La fotografia en Colombia de 1950 a 2000 – Museo Nacional – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Selections from ‘Dancing Bear’ the Collection of W.M. Hunt / Arles: Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photo 2005 – Arles – França
– The Generals, (com Julieta Aranda, K8 Hardy e Gareth James) – Art in General – Nova York – EUA
– Digital Cotton – Savannah Gallery at the Savannah College of Art – Savannah – EUA
2004
– The Book as Object and Performance – Gigantic ArtSpace – Nova York – EUA
– LMCC’s Workspace 120 Broadway Open Studios – Lower Manhattan Cultural Council – Nova York – EUA
– The Freedom Salon – Deitch Projects – Nova York – EUA
– 2nd Biennale Adriatica di Arti Nuove – San Benedetto del Tronto – Itália
– Free Roaming: Video Madness (Screening) – El Museo – Nova York – EUA
– Produciendo Realidad – Associazione Culturale PRomateo di Lucca – Lucca – Itália
– Urbes Interiores – Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Outdoor Intervention – PS122 Gallery – Nova York – EUA
– Establishing Shot – Artists Space – Nova York – EUA
2003
– Salón Regional de Artistas de Bogotá – Museum of Modern Art – Bogotá – Colômbia
– XII Bienal de Arte de Cerveira – Forum Cultural – Cerveira – Portugal
– Visiones, Fotología Photography Festival – Universidad de Salamanca – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Translatability – Berlimer Kunstproject – Berlim – Alemanha
– Agitate: Negotiating the Photographic Process – SF Camerawork – San Francisco – EUA
– No Money No Honey – Area (Contenitore d’Arte Contemporanea) – Palermo – Itália
– [B L A N K]: In Pursuit of An American History – Staller Center for the Arts – Stony Brook University – Stony Brook – EUA
2002-2000
– Mundos Creados: Constructed Photography from the Wider Caribbean – Noorderlicht Photofestival – Fries Museum – Groningen – Holanda
– Fresh: New Photography – Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art – Nova York – EUA
– Latin- American Photography from Nova York to Santiago de Chile, Fotografia: Primo Festival Internazionale di Roma – IILA – Roma – Itália
– Tecnica Mista – La Corte Arte Contemporanea – Florença – Itália
Collections (selection)
Bronx Museum, Nova York
Cisneros Fontanals Foundation, Miami
Colección Dieresis, Guadalajara
Deutsche Bank, New York
Faena Art, Buenos Aires / Miami
Fundación ARCO, Madrid
Fundación Cisneros, Caracas / Nova York
Fundación RAC (Rosón Arte Contemporáneo), Pontevedra
Guggenheim Museum, New York
Lab’ Bel, Paris
LARA Foundation, Singapore
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Nova York
Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), Nova York
MALBA—Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona (MACBA)
Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM)
Museo de Arte, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI)
Museu Fundação Serralves, Porto
Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Nova York
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Atenas
Nc-arte, Bogotá
Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami
PinchukArtCentre, Kiev
Proyecto AMIL, Lima
The Art Institute of Chicago
Timeline, Konstfack’s Videotek, Konstfack, Stockholm
Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah
Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw
Teaching
– Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice, Fine Arts Department, Pratt University, New York (Full Time since 2019)
– Mentor, Textile Arts Center’s Artist in Residence (TAC AIR) Program, New York, 2019
– Adjunct Faculty, MFA & BFA Photography Departments, Parsons The New School of Design, New York (2005-2016)
– Adjunct Faculty, BFA Photography Department, The School of Visual Arts, New York (2011-2014)
– Adjunct Faculty, General Studies Program, International Center of Photography, New York (2002-2015)
– Adjunct Faculty, Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2010-2012)
– Visiting Faculty, MFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT (2009-2014)
– Visiting Faculty, MFA, Pratt Institute School of Art and Design, Brooklyn, New York (Spring 2014)
– Visiting Faculty, MFA, Cooper Union School of Art, New York (Fall 2013)
Grants, Residencies, Awards
2023
Fellowship, Artist Impact Initiative x Creative Time R&D Fellowship, Nova York, EUA
2022
Project Grant, “Dispossessions in the Americas,” Penn Mellon Just Futures Initiative Grant, Philadelphia, PA
Best experimental short film, national competition, 20 Bogoshorts, Bogotá, Colombia
Fellowship, Obra Viva: Artistic Creation Laboratory, Banco de la República, Centro Cultural Leticia, Colombia
EFA Studio Program 2022, New York
2021
Visual Arts Residency, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
2019
Project Grant, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York
2018
Visiting Scholar, Department of Performance Studies, New York University (NYU), New York
2017
– The Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise – Nova York – EUA
2015
– Finalist— Discovery Award, 2015 – LOOP – Barcelona – Espanha
2014
– Main Prize— Future Generation Art Prize 2014 – PinchukArtCentre – Kiev – Ucrânia
2013
– Hoteles Catalonia Award – In recognition to the best work selected by the LOOP 2013 jury – Barcelona – Espanha
– Beca de circulación nacional e internacional para artistas y agentes de las artes visuales – Ministerio de Cultura, Colômbia
– Artist Residency – The Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice – Union Theological Seminary – Nova York – EUA
2012
– Makers Muse Award – Kindle Project – Santa Fé – EUA
– Visual Arts Grant – Creative Capital – Nova York – EUA
2010
– Individual Artist Grant – Nova York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) – Nova York – EUA
– Jury Prize – Map Digital Space – Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) – Nova York – EUA
2009
– Artist Residency – Flaggfabrikken – Bergen – Noruega
2008
– Guggenheim Fellowship – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation – Nova York – EUA
– New Commission – Art in General – Nova York – EUA
– Studio Residency – Smack Mellon – Nova York – EUA
– Special Editions Residency – Lower East Side Printshop – Nova York – EUA
– Finishing Funds – Experimental Television Center – Nova York – EUA
2007
– Art Matters Grant – Art Matters Foundation – Nova York – EUA
– Artist Residency – International Artists Studio Program in Suécia (IASPIS) – Estocolmo – Suécia
– Swing Space Program – Lower Manhattan Cultural Council – Nova York – EUA
– DaNY Arts Grant (com Homework) – Danish Arts Council – Aarhus – Dinamarca
2006
– Subvention Grant – Cisneros Fontanals Foundation [CIFO] – Miami – EUA
– Next Exhibition Award – Real Art Ways – Hartford – EUA
2005- 2006
– Fellowship – Whitney Museum Independent Study Program – Nova York – EUA
2005
Workspace Grant for Emerging Artists – Center for Book Arts – Nova York – EUA
2004
– Workspace Program Residency – Lower Manhattan Cultural Council – Nova York – EUA
2001/2002/2003
– Fellowship – Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College – Nova York – EUA
– Rhodes Family Award for Exceptional Achievement in Photography – The School of Visual Arts – Nova York – EUA
“The power of the state rests on its ability to consume time, that is, to abolish the archive and anaesthetise the past.”
“Fundamentally, the dead should be formally prohibited from stirring up disorder in the present.” —Achille Mbembe
Carlos Motta: We The Enemy, an exhibition of recent works by the internationally acclaimed artist, gathers suppressed histories of social and political subjection from different corners of history—from the persecution of LGBTQIA+ individuals under ecclesiastical colonialism in the Americas to the fraught history of medical research and HIV/AIDS. With video works and performance documentation, historical subjugations and present abuses overlap and times merge in We The Enemy. And, yet, there is no drowning in these currents of trauma. Instead, the oppressed are unmoored from history in Motta’s poignant and stirring artworks and stand together, a rising and palpable resistance.
The exhibition begins with the sounds of the world cleaving.
The artwork that opens the show and which gives it is name, We The Enemy, 2019, is a video manifesto by a collective Motta formed with John Arthur Peetz and Carlos Maria Romero known as SPIT! (Sodomites, Perverts, Inverts Together!) The manifesto compiles the litany of slurs and insults that have been directed at LGBTQIA+ people. For the video, the Greek artist Despina Zacharopoulou carefully enunciates the terms, “fairies…dykes…AIDS carriers.” The compilation of abuses reverberates from the biblical past “sodomite” to today’s sharp twist, “those on PrEP,”1 a paired down telling of a long history of social and political disenfranchisement.
The archive of insults resonates against the backdrop of recent United States legislation that allows discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity under the guise of “religious protections” and bans transgender individuals from serving in the military. This history constructed through denigration also names the broader mode of nationalism under which such discrimination thrives. Highlighting the historical emphasis on rendering some – delineated through sexual desire and gender identification – enemies, the exhibition draws a line between current oppressions and the political philosophy detailed by German theorist Carl Schmitt in 1927. A conservative who joined the Nazi party in 1933, Schmitt was describing and prescribing a political methodology when he wrote “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” 2 According to Schmitt, political unity and national pride are best achieved by finding common cause in identifying enemies and rooting them out.
We The Enemy takes historical inventory and suggests a reckoning is coming from this longstanding divisive politics. There is a brief silence following the last slur, “de-generates.” Then, a warning: “We… are and will always be the enemy.” With these words, We The Enemy begins to assemble those made enemies across decades and centuries of discrimination and oppression.
Corpo Fechado: The Devil’s Work, 2019, the next work in the exhibition, is part of this gathering. The 24-minute multilayered video dramatizes the true story of José Francisco Pereira, who in the 18th century was kidnapped from West Africa and sold into slavery in Brazil. In 1731, after Pereira was sold to a slaveholder in Portugal, the courts of the Lisbon Inquisition tried him for sorcery for creating and distributing bolsas de mandinga—amulets to protect the enslaved. He was also charged with sodomy. For these perceived crimes, Pereira was exiled from Lisbon and condemned to end his days rowing in a galley, never again to set foot on shore. 3
Corpo Fechado summons Pereira—sorcerer and sodomite—from the seas in which he was banished. Pereira emerges, staring out of the screen with large, luminous eyes, now “perhaps” the angel of history described by German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin. In his critique of historicism and rejection of the idea of time as the continuum of progress, Benjamin describes the angel of history being propelled into the future with his face turned towards the past, staring in horror at the wreckage accumulating before him. 4
“A storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.”5
Pereira’s gaze remains fixed as he describes the ruins that trail with him as he is blown into our shared future–of being kidnapped, stripped of his name, and baptized a slave. In between texts woven together from Inquisition trial records and Saint Peter Damian’s infamous Book of Gomorrah, 1049, which declared sodomy as an unrepentable sin, Pereira speaks of rituals practiced in the struggle for freedom and the desires of inhabiting a body deemed “impenetrable” by the Church and those who claim to own him. Cloaked in the robes of his twin crimes—sorcery and sodomy—Pereira wanders through churches and museums in Portugal, the baroque backdrop of Corpo Fechado, tracing the “progress” of the history that condemned him for his beliefs and desires. 6
This progress (and persecution) tracks into the present in an accompanying video interview, I Mark My Presence with my Own Beliefs, 2019, with the actor who plays Pereira, Paulo Pascoal. The actor explains that when he came out as gay in a 2014 TED x Luanda talk, he was subsequently forced into exile from his home country, Angola. He now resides in Lisbon, trapped in a sort of immigration limbo, unable to re-enter Portugal if he should leave. The lives of these two men born hundreds of years merge across the two videos, as current immigration politics blend into a history of theology, slavery, and colonialism.
In the epigraph that opens this essay, Achille Mbembe argues that present politics depend on omissions of the past. As he writes, “the power of the state rests on its ability to consume time…anaesthetise the past,” and omit from history that which disrupts present narratives of progress. 7 Current time has much to fear from history, in Mbembe’s assessment, and from the dead who, if awakened, can stir “up disorder.” 8 Motta has summoned Pereira as sorcerer, sodomite, and angel back from the dead. Beyond bearing witness to past ruins of the past, he brings with him a history to wreak havoc on the present.
In the final small gallery of We The Enemy is Legacy, 2019, the video documentation of a 27-minute endurance performance by Motta. For this performance, the artist wears a dental gag as he attempts to tell the timeline of HIV/AIDS from 1908 to 2019, as dictated to him by the U.S. radio broad-caster Ari Shapiro. With his mouth forced open by the metal instrument, the history that Motta tries to tell, one in which people, primarily LGBTQIA+, are left to die through governmental and medical neglect, is rendered almost unspeakable. The performance enacts the difficulties of recovering pasts and bringing back the dead. And yet, it is precisely within the confusion created by a history obscured that the dead gather, intent on disordering the present.
In Motta’s resurrection of harsh records of persecution and oppression of people rendered different by gender, sexuality, and race, histories accumulate. One of the curses of history is that it is impossible to change the course leading to the current moment. Despite the terrible inevitability of the past, however, Motta’s powerful artworks evoke history in order to make ruins out of present structures of persecution and discrimination. We The Enemy begins and ends in defiance: if we are the enemies, then enemies we shall be—united against those who are friends to oppression.
Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives and an archivist of repressed histories, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.
Motta has been the subject of survey exhibitions including at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia (2017), Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2018), and Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden (2015). His work is in the permanent collections of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona; and Museo de Arte de Banco de la República, Bogotá, among others.
His solo exhibitions include Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo (2019); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2016); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2016); PinchukArtCentre, Kiev (2015); Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City (2013); New Museum, New York (2012); MoMA PS1, New York (2009); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2009).
Motta participated in 32 Bienal de São Paulo (2016); X Gwangju Biennale (2014); and X Lyon Biennale (2010). His films have been screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival (2016, 2010); Toronto International Film Festival (2013); and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (2016); among others. Motta has been awarded the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise (2017); the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008). Motta is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt University.
Carlos Motta: We The Enemy was on view at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery January 23–March 14, 2020. The exhibition was generously funded by the Nion McEvoy Family Fund, Rowland and Pat Rebele, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Sesnon Gallery. Collaborators include SFMOMA, UCSC Center for Cultural Studies, Lionel Cantú Queer Resource Center, El Centro: Chicanx Latinx Resource, and UCSC Arts Division.
Organized by Rachel Nelson, interim director, Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz.
NotesEpigraph:
Achille Mbembe. “The Power of the Archive and its Limits.” Refiguring the Archive. (CapeTown: David Philip Publishers, 2002), 19–26.
1. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) is a daily medicine that can be taken to prevent HIV.
2. Carl Schmitt. The Concept of the Political. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 26.
3. See also Jack McGraw. Carlos Motta: Conatus. (New York: P.P.O.W. Gallery, 2019), accessed December 20, 2019, https://carlosmotta.com/project/conatus/
4. Walter Benjamin. “On the Concept of History.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael J. Jennings. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 389–400.
5. Benjamin, Walter Benjamin, 392.
6. See also Denise Ferreira da Silva. Corpus Infinitum. (Lisbon: Galerias Municipais, 2019), accessed December 20, 2019, https://carlosmotta.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DENISE_FERREIRA.pdf
7. Mbembe, Refiguring, 23.8. Mbembe, Refiguring, 22.
Exhibition Brochure, Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery, Institute of the Arts and Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, January 2020
It is a dangerous time to be a migrant living within US borders or arriving at them looking for work or political refuge. This danger is compounded for queer migrants who risk additional harm from multiple directions—the state, fellow travelers, family members and ordinary homophobes. It goes without saying then that to create art as a queer migrant, and to do so with queer migrants as subject matter is bold, courageous, and defiant. These adjectives perfectly characterize artist Carlos Motta’s body of work and perhaps specifically his latest and ongoing documentary project on undocumented queer artists in the United States. In this case, as with all of his work, Motta’s collaborative approach to art proves difficult to simply characterize given the probing questions he poses, the sites he centers, and the points of view he privileges. His works to date have considered subjects such as the value of democracy for marginalized groups, the significance of political art for achieving democratic ends, the role of colonial legacies in defining not just racial, but gender and sexual norms, and the state violence of immigration regimes, particularly for queer people.
In responding to what has been described as an immigration “crisis,” this timely project continues his trajectory by centering the lived experiences of a relatively new political subject: the undocuqueer. Undocuqueers identify as queer or trans and undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Although the term didn’t originate with him, “undocuqueer” often gets attributed to Bay Area undocuqueer artist, Julio Salgado, the charismatic subject of Motta’s installation in the SOFT POWER exhibition at SF MoMA, who in 2010-11 created a series of brightly colored posters with the cartoon likeness of undocuqueer activists from around the United States. Salgado positioned each activist on the poster beneath the phrase “I am Undocuqueer,” and beside an empowering or political statement from the activist. These posters circulated widely at rallies, in radical spaces, and online. Undocuqueers, who are young and multiracial, changed the landscape for US immigration politics, which up to that time had been largely dominated by Latino/a/x organizations and leaders of an older generation with a commitment to traditional (read Catholic) family values and a brand of respectability politics that emphasized immigrants’ hard work, contributions to the economy, and status as law abiding.
As expressed by Salgado in the videos that make the installation and elsewhere, especially in the early days, some undocuqueers shared a commitment to respectability politics. As they developed, their politics took cue from queer/AIDS activists of the late 20th century. Like Queer Nation, undocuqueers insisted: we’re here, we’re undocuqueer, get used to it! Drawing from their experiences coming out of the closet as queer, many elected to come out of the shadows as undocumented. They agitated in the offices of elected officials, ran slick media campaigns, and gained national attention. Their efforts did not result in the passage of the DREAM Act, which would have granted some of them a pathway to citizenship; nor did they result in comprehensive immigration reform. Their efforts did result in Obama’s executive order creating DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which in 2012 gave some of these young people access to a work permit and a brief reprieve from the fear of deportation. Ever since the 2016 election, this program has been under constant threat, putting these now very visible young people in a vulnerable spot.
In featuring voices and images of some key undocuqueer activists like Salgado, Motta’s collaborative project highlights the power of refusing to even attempt to return to the shadows, no matter the risk. His work emphasizes the necessity of an intersectional lens for politics, one that recognizes the complexity of power and identity as the crucial basis for coalition building. Motta asks his audience to consider their own collusion with state practices and violence that have created the conditions in which these young activists survive, and often thrive. Motta uses his art as whip-smart political theory, biting commentary, and sobering looking glass. What makes the work so special though, is how Motta conjoins politics with deeply moving personal narratives. Undocuqueer artists and activists are typically celebrated or maligned based purely on their political actions and academic or professional achievements. Motta makes manifest the people behind the politics: their pain, senses of humor, desires, and quirks. The installation thus provides audiences with a profound window into the lives of what Salgado has called “illegals in times of crisis.”
But a crisis is not just a condition of danger or instability. A crisis may also be a determinative turning point. The first sense of the term seems to be what catalyzed so much of the post-2016-election creation of political art and other “artivist” interventions on a widespread scale perhaps not seen in the United States since the 1960s, prompting New York Magazine editor-at-large Carl Swanson to ask: “Is political art the only art that matters now?”[1] The 2016 election also catalyzed Carlos Motta’s project on undocuqueer “artivists” in the United States, but Motta’s work points audiences toward the second sense of the term crisis. As always, his rich, nuanced, historically grounded art, interrogates the political and cultural moment, offering new and refreshing lenses with which to see and understand. In this work, he refuses to dwell on the danger and the instability of the crisis. With his collaborators, he provides intellectual and creative resources, pathways, and templates with which to respond and intervene.
[1] https://www.vulture.com/2017/04/is-political-art-the-only-art-that-matters-now.html
Gravidade [Gravity]
We the enemy
Deseos