dis-continuum: 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition
On view: April 26 – May 11, 2019
Opening reception: Friday, April 26, 2019, 5:30 PM
Joint Artist Lecture: Thursday, May 2, 2019, 5:30 PM
University Art Gallery
“dis-continuum: 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition “OPENS AT THE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY AT NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY
Las Cruces, NM–The University Art Gallery (UAG) is proud to present dis-continuum: 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition, featuring the work by MFA candidates Cleo Arevalo and Fernando Enriquez. dis-continuum links Arevalo and Enriquez through the duality of their years growing up in both Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. Both artists focus on their binary heritage, and the complexities that arise from these connections. NMSU Visiting Assistant Professor, Joshua Clark, remarks of their practices, “Arevalo’s work addresses the strategies used in the systemic globalized oppression of the masses, and in Enriquez’s work one can glimpse the results of this globalized capitalist system on a local and personalized scale.”
Arevalo and Enriquez explore, through a variety of strategies and formal means, their identities and connections with established cultural characteristics and icons. Arevalo uses a wide range of mediums, including ready-mades, videos, and print-media produced using appropriated images from the internet. Her process is rooted in the institutional practice of manufactured consent. The resulting work explores the manipulation of information and significant cultural symbols, serving as social discourse and scrutinizing the accessibility and manipulation of media. Enriquez’s work embraces the hybrid identity of Chicano, the subtle complexities of being both American and Mexican, and in some ways being other in both. Clark goes on to say, “The work of Cleo Arevalo and Fernando Enriquez are cyclically linked. It is the relationship between macro cause and micro effect. Arevalo’s work addresses the strategies used in the systemic globalized oppression of the masses, and in Enriquez’s work one can glimpse the results of this globalized capitalist system on a local and personalized scale. Between the works of these two artists is a subliminal space where one can ruminate on their own position in the world, and it begs the question of each of us, are you among the comfortably appeased or is your oppression more easily identifiable?”
Join us for the opening reception of dis-continuum: 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition on Friday, April 26, 2018, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the UAG. In conjunction with this event, the BFA exhibition opening is concurrently taking place in the UAG. Both receptions are free and open to the public.
Programming for dis-continuum: 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition includes an Artist Talk on Thursday, May 2 at 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. with Cleo Arevalo and Fernando Enriquez. For more information about this and other free, community-wide events, visit the UAG’s website for more information. https://uam.nmsu.edu/
CONTACT: Jasmine Woodul, Gallery Administrator, NMSU University Art Gallery (575-646-2545; artglry@nmsu.edu)
