https://amengualcarmen.com Carmen Amengual Tue, 23 May 2023 22:37:18 +0000 https://amengualcarmen.com en https://amengualcarmen.com/HOME Wed, 05 Sep 2018 01:13:26 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/HOME C A R M E N A M E N G U AL W O R K S A Non-Coincidental Mirror Before my, your, her, his, our, your, their faces Una fuerza que venga y me una Fragments from Algiers Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision The Tenuous Arithmetic of Kinship The Ages Obituary for Some Beautiful Ideas The Eyes That See You On the Trail Rack of Modernity BIO &amp; CV PUBLICATIONS NEWS CONTACT https://amengualcarmen.com/NEWS Tue, 24 Dec 2019 03:23:15 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/NEWS NEWS 2026 SOLO EXHIBITIONDisembodied by intelligence, Prospect Art, Los AngelesCONFERENCE Radical Film Network 2026, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, FranceSCREENINGSorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France 2025 GROUP EXHIBITION Non-Aligned Visions, Public Trust, Philadelphia. IN RESIDENCY Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France BOOK RELEASECarmen Amengual: A Non-coincidental Mirror. Published by The Vera List Center for Arts and Politics. 2024&nbsp; SOLO EXHIBITIONDec. 7, 2024 -Feb 9, 2025 Carmen Amengual:&nbsp;A Non-coincidental Mirror, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY&nbsp; RESIDENCYAutomata, Los Angeles (upcoming)&nbsp; 2023 CONFERENCEFilm Act: Third Cinema and its legacies. 3-5 December 2023, &nbsp;American University in Cairo, Egypt. SYMPOSIUMFilm Undone. Elements of a Latent Cinema. 20-23 July, Silent Green and Kino Arsenal, Berlin. FELLOWSHIPCarmen Amengual is a 2022–2024 Vera List Center Fellow whose fellowship project, A Non-coincidental Mirror, is part of the Vera List Center’s Focus Theme cycle Correction*. GROUP EXHIBITIONSentient Office Hours, art space. California State University Dominguez Hill. 2022 GROUP EXHIBITION Everything is Common 2021-22 Whitney Independent Study Program's studio exhibition May 20 – May 29, 2022, Artists Space, New York PUBLICATIONEverything is Common exhibition catalogue [PDF available here] GROUP EXHIBITIONKinetic Lullaby Co-Curated by Alison Causer &amp; Darla Migan &nbsp; NYSS DUMBO GALLERY, Brooklyn 2021 RESIDENCYThe Whitney Independent Study Program, Studio program, New York 2020 SEMINAR Carmen Amengual will be leading the seminar Exercises in close reading: Text / Space at The Southland Institute, Los Angeles 2019 PUBLICATIONKirsten mairead Gill writes on Carmen Amengual’s&nbsp;Fragments from Algiers.&nbsp;https://island-is.land/texts/only-a-truncated-and-imaginary-vision EXHIBITION Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision, Biquini Wax, Mexico City <img width="944" height="940" width_o="944" height_o="940" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/300ffee319dab3959ffe88e315c262711eee167a14f4fce7d5e9855f0fb82a28/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-7.02.32-PM.png" data-mid="59032586" border="0" data-scale="51" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/944/i/300ffee319dab3959ffe88e315c262711eee167a14f4fce7d5e9855f0fb82a28/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-7.02.32-PM.png" /> RESIDENCY Artist in residence at SOMA Summer 2019, Mexico City PANEL DISCUSSION Lyric Poetry is Dead. Book release and panel discussion, with Ezequiel Zaidenwerg, Carmen Amengual and Robin Meyers. Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop, Brooklyn, NY RESIDENCYWill be participating at the 2019 season of the&nbsp;Mountain School of Arts, Los&nbsp;Angeles SCREENING March, 257:30 PM Screening &amp; live reading at The International Expanded Field, at Human Resources, Los Angeles. Organized by Gelare Khoshgozaran and Jimena Sarno. <img width="640" height="958" width_o="640" height_o="958" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/831e7f4e4e8f6af8df6590cdce37c878bdb091231b63aee03502311c25b6ab5a/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-6.43.15-PM.png" data-mid="59031374" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/640/i/831e7f4e4e8f6af8df6590cdce37c878bdb091231b63aee03502311c25b6ab5a/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-6.43.15-PM.png" /> 2018 EXHIBITIONThe tenuous arithmetics of kinship is opening this Thursday at table, Chicago <img width="2930" height="2180" width_o="2930" height_o="2180" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/90fec3088ec97c28cf50ef1a80d0474dbeb4aa92436b3e88feb9ab4bee36b210/Table-Invite-Final.jpg" data-mid="59031121" border="0" data-scale="50" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/90fec3088ec97c28cf50ef1a80d0474dbeb4aa92436b3e88feb9ab4bee36b210/Table-Invite-Final.jpg" /> EXHIBITION The Ages opens this Saturday, June 23rd. at 5pm Mirasol 1370, Los Angeles <img width="1482" height="968" width_o="1482" height_o="968" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5b9ec0efe8e235313284243f77244afd67560bd23bdc6b123726e530b692d527/Screen-Shot-2018-06-17-at-1.08.16-PM.png" data-mid="59031086" border="0" data-scale="49" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5b9ec0efe8e235313284243f77244afd67560bd23bdc6b123726e530b692d527/Screen-Shot-2018-06-17-at-1.08.16-PM.png" /> 2017 PANEL October 22 The Words of Others. Book launch and panel discussion Ruth Estévez, director of the gallery at REDCAT, and curator of the exhibition The Words of Others: León Ferrari and Rhetoric in Times of War, will lead a discussion with Jen Hofer, one of the Antena-affiliated translators of the book, and Carmen Amengual, researcher, about the process behind the making of this piece, as well as the practice of collage as a political strategy in the work of Ferrari, and in the broader context of the 1960s and 1970s. REDCAT PERFORMANCE September 16 1-8 pm I will be participating in the reading-performance The Words of Others (Palabras ajenas) by León Ferrari&nbsp;at REDCAT, Los Angeles CURATORIAL LATlab presents I Come From Where the Palm Tree Grows Organized by Molly Surazhsky June 16th 7-10 pm <img width="1596" height="900" width_o="1596" height_o="900" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f19f7fbfc508edbcfa7cae947fb1b4bfc06c7939e7ba6fa29ce5c34328bd3131/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-11.07.37-PM.png" data-mid="59042440" border="0" data-scale="49" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f19f7fbfc508edbcfa7cae947fb1b4bfc06c7939e7ba6fa29ce5c34328bd3131/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-11.07.37-PM.png" /> CURATORIAL LATlab presents Juliana Luján and Julio Orta Friday, April 14th 7-10 pm <img width="1526" height="924" width_o="1526" height_o="924" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1da45d989a364d226db719d842cfaf9263c25b6905e4798d8a23b8527ebe7f17/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-11.00.13-PM.png" data-mid="59042145" border="0" data-scale="49" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1da45d989a364d226db719d842cfaf9263c25b6905e4798d8a23b8527ebe7f17/Screen-Shot-2020-01-20-at-11.00.13-PM.png" /> 2016 RESIDENCY Artist in Residence, CalArts REEF Residency, Maker City LA GROUP&nbsp;EXHIBITION Exit Interview,&nbsp;CalArts MFA exhibition June 25,&nbsp;6-9 pm&nbsp; Human Resources, Los Angeles https://amengualcarmen.com/CONTACT Tue, 24 Dec 2019 03:22:08 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/CONTACT CONTAcT Carmen Amengual is an artist based between Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Los Angeles (US). For inquiries or to request additional information, please email: carmenamengual.studio@gmail.com https://amengualcarmen.com/Bio-CV Tue, 24 Dec 2019 03:22:42 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/Bio-CV BIO &amp; CV Carmen Amengual (Buenos Aires, 1979) is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and independent researcher. Her practice draws on fragile archives, micro-histories, and oral narratives to investigate how stories of resistance circulate and transform over time. Through experimental cinema, installation, and critical research, she activates incomplete or forgotten materials —unrealized scripts, unfinished projects, and buried collective and individual dreams— situating them in the present and opening them to experiential dimensions capable of projecting new futurities. Her work engages with historical and family archives, as well as myths, oral accounts, and literature, to explore the intersections of political memory, biography, and history. Informed by feminist and anti-colonial methodologies, she examines the ruins of emancipatory cultural imaginaries and the forms of sociability, pedagogy, and friendship they sought to create. Her projects span film, sculpture, sound, text, and installation, unfolding layered narratives in which the historical and the speculative converge to reimagine the ties between past and future. In recent years, Amengual has developed A Non-Coincidental Mirror, a film-research and installation project that reconstructs the legacy of the Third World Filmmakers Meetings (Algiers, 1973 – Buenos Aires, 1974) while revisiting an unrealized documentary project of the era. Its first phase, presented in a solo exhibition at Smack Mellon, New York (2024–25), received the Creative Capital Award (2024), two consecutive Graham Foundation grants (2023–24), and a research fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2025). She has participated in programs and residencies including the Whitney Independent Study Program (2021–22), the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics Fellowship (2022–24), and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2025). Her work has been shown in North America (Smack Mellon, Artists Space, New York; table, Chicago; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Bikini Wax, Mexico City), Europe (Silent Green, Berlin; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris), and Africa (American University, Cairo). She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Buenos Aires and an MFA in Visual Arts from CalArts. EDUCATION 2021–2022 Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program, Studio Program, New York, US 2016 MFA, Art Program, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, US 2014 BA, Comparative Literature, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina GRANTS, AWARDS &amp; RESIDENCIES 2025  Awardee,&nbsp;Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Research Grant, USArtist-in-Residence, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, FR2024 Awardee, Creative Capital, New York, USGrantee, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Emergency Grant, US Grantee, Center for Cultural Innovation, Quick Grant, Los Angeles, US Grantee, Graham Foundation, Production &amp; Presentation Grant to Individual Artists, Chicago, US Artist-in-Residence, Rhizome, Algiers, DZ Grantee, Prospect Art, New Work Grant, Los Angeles, US Artist-in-Residence, Automata, Los Angeles, US 2023 Grantee, Graham Foundation, Research &amp; Development Grant to Individual Artists, Chicago, US 2022–2024 Artist Fellow, Vera List Center for Arts and Politics, The New School, New York, US 2021–2022 Studio Fellow, Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program, New York, US 2019 Artist-in-Residence, SOMA Summer, Mexico City, MXArtist-in-Residence, The Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles, US 2016–2017 Artist-in-Residence, CalArts REEF Residency, Maker City LA, Los Angeles, US 2015 Fellow, CalArts Research Fellowship, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US Grantee, Dean's Reserve Grant, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US Grantee, CalArts Grant, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US 2014 Grantee, Dean's Reserve Grant, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US Grantee, CalArts Grant, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US 2005 Awardee, Premio Centenario, Primer Salón de Artes Visuales Prilidiano Pueyrredón, Museo Quinta Trabucco, Buenos Aires, AR SOLO EXHIBITIONS2026 Disembodied by intelligence. Prospect Art, Los Angeles. 2024–25  A Non-Coincidental Mirror, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, New York, US 2019 Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision, Biquini Wax EPS, Mexico City, MX 2018 The Tenuous Arithmetic of Kinship, table, Chicago, US The Ages, Dread Lounge, Los Angeles, US 2016 Playing Around Her, Mint Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US 2015Other Words, Other Worlds, Gallery D300, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS2025 Non-Aligned Visions, Public Trust, Philadelphia, US 2023 Sentient, Office Hours, California State University Dominguez Hills, Carson, US 2022 Everything Is Common, Whitney ISP 2021–22, Artists Space, New York, US Kinetic Lullaby, NYSS Dumbo Gallery, Brooklyn, US 2020 Artist Run Chicago 2.0 (with Kyle Bellucci Johanson), Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, US 2019 The International Expanded Field, Human Resources, Los Angeles, US 2016 Exit Interview, Human Resources, Los Angeles, US 2015 Summer Recital: A Sculpture Exhibition, Main Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US Mid-Residency Exhibition, Main Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, US 2014 Six Against the Cyclops, E.D. Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles, US Works on Paper, Antenna Studio, Los Angeles, US Curiouser &amp; Curiouser, Art Division, Los Angeles, US 2005 Premio Centenario, Museo Quinta Trabucco, Buenos Aires, AR SCREENINGS (selected) 2026 Radical Film Network. Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, FR 2025 Non-Aligned Visions, Public Trust, Philadelphia, US Ciné Club, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, FR A Non-Coincidental Mirror, e-flux Screening Room, Brooklyn, New York, US 2024 Tiny Sketches for a Piece on Language and Power, Prospect Art, Los Angeles, US Footprints of the Forgotten, Los Angeles Filmforum, 2220 Arts + Archives, US 2019 The International Expanded Field, Human Resources, Los Angeles, US Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, USPRESENTATIONS &amp; PANELS&nbsp;2026Combat Breathing, Vol.2. Sympodium on Art and Politics, New York. RFN 2026-Radical Film Network. Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, FR 2025Visible Evidence, conference. Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania&nbsp; SUR O NO SUR. International Conference. University of Valparaíso. School of Film Studies. Chile A Non-Coincidental Mirror: Book release. Public conversation between Yasmina Price and Carmen Amengual moderated by Eriola Pira. Carmen Amengual and Soyoung Yoon in conversation: E-flux screening room. New York. 2024 Footprints of the Forgotten, (speaker). Los Angeles Filmforum. 2220 Arts + Archives, Los Angeles. 2023 Film-Act: Third Cinema and its legacies, (speaker), American University in Cairo, Egypt. Film Undone. Elements of a Latent Cinema, (speaker) Silent Green &amp; Film Arsenal, Berlin.2022 Vera List Center for Arts and Politics 2022 Forum, (speaker). The New School, New York. 2020 Adelita Husni Bey and Simon Leung in conversation (Presenter and organizer). REDCAT, Los Angeles2019 Lyric Poetry is Dead. Book release and panel discussion, with Ezequiel Zaidenwerg, Carmen Amengual and Robin Meyers. Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop, Brooklyn, NY2017 In search of The Words of Others. León Ferrari, The Words of Others. panel discussion with Ruth Estévez, Carmen Amengual and Jen Hoffer. REDCAT, Los AngelesMedia &amp; Democracy: From the Vietnam War to the Consolidation of “Alternative Facts” in the Digital Era: Marc Cooper, Robert Scheer and Suzi Weissman in conversation. (Organizer)REDCAT, Los Angeles2016 Arts and Politics. A Latin American perspective. LATlab Laboratory for Latin American Art/Thinking. CalArts REEF Residency, Maker City LA, Los Angeles CURATORIAL &amp; ORGANIZING (selected) 2025  Co-curator, To Trace the Line Where Your Body Cut the Air, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, US 2021  Curator, Aria Dean: Suite!, Gallery at REDCAT, Los Angeles, US 2020  Assistant Curator, Inside Out &amp; Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1970–2019, REDCAT, Los Angeles, US Co-Curator, 50+50: A Creative Century from Chouinard to CalArts, REDCAT, Los Angeles, US 2017  Assistant Curator &amp; Research Associate. The Words of Others: León Ferrari and Rhetoric in Times of War, REDCAT / PST:LA/LACo-Director LATlab, Laboratory for Latin American Art &amp; Thinking. Los Angeles, USTEACHING EXPERIENCE 2025 Guest Lecturer, MFA Curatorial Practice, School of Visual Arts, New York, US 2022 Visiting Lecturer, MFA, Parsons School of Art, The New School, US 2020 Faculty, Exercises in Close Reading: Text/Space, The Southland Institute, Los Angeles, US 2019 Faculty, The Southland Institute, Los Angeles, US 2018 Visiting Artist Lecture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USVisiting Faculty, CalArts Winter Session, Seminar: The Idea of Latin America 2016 Graduate Assistant, Thomas Lawson: Thinking about Painting, CalArts, US&nbsp; PRESS &amp; PUBLICATIONS (selected) 2025 A Non-Coincidental Mirror Catalogue, Vera List Center, New York, US “The Voice of the Wet Concrete: A Conversation” (with Soyoung Yoon), e-flux Notes, Feb 2025AK Latif. "From Buenos Aires to Beirut: Circuits of Cinematic Solidarities". Senses of Cinema, May 2025. 2024  “The 10 Exhibitions to See in December,” ArtReview, Dec 2024    Between Illusion and Revolution, in Film Undone. Elements of a Latent Cinema, Archive Books, Berlin    Revista Concreta #22 (Contributor), Editorial Concreta, Spain 2021  “Unseen in the Archives: Inclusion and Omission,” East of Borneo, Jan 2021 2019 Kirsten Mairead Gill, “Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision,” Island Island 2018 Lyric Poetry Is Dead, drawings by Amengual, Cardboard House Press, NY 2017 “Introduction: The Words of Others” (with Ruth Estévez), in León Ferrari: The Words of Others, REDCAT / X Artists’ Books, Los Angeles https://amengualcarmen.com/A-Non-coincidental-Mirror Tue, 23 May 2023 22:37:18 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/A-Non-coincidental-Mirror A Non-Coincidental Mirror FILM RESEARCH&nbsp;ONGOING <img width="2771" height="1687" width_o="2771" height_o="1687" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fcb9039dbdd1c33cf1278eb72d2a446ce930a8cd7117d8065afadfb3cd3a140f/2024_AMENGUAL_image01.jpg" data-mid="228386967" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fcb9039dbdd1c33cf1278eb72d2a446ce930a8cd7117d8065afadfb3cd3a140f/2024_AMENGUAL_image01.jpg" />Carmen Amengual, A Non-coincidental Mirror. 2024. Still from film. 16 mm to digital. A Non-Coincidental Mirror is a film-research project that fabricates a memory of a forgotten event: the Third World Filmmakers Meetings. Held in Algiers in 1973 and later in Buenos Aires in 1974, the gatherings brought together filmmakers from Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world to discuss the role of cinema in anti-colonial struggles, to support one another’s work, and to strategize how to make films under conditions of censorship, exile, and scarcity. Out of these meetings emerged the plan to produce an educational documentary about African liberation movements, intended for a Latin American audience. That film was never realized. <img width="4080" height="2524" width_o="4080" height_o="2524" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bc0a6e68a6691b0c941b80a2342a7675f4b99d17e13702e4b8bad34c5f793618/PXL_20241211_173214145.jpg" data-mid="227863186" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bc0a6e68a6691b0c941b80a2342a7675f4b99d17e13702e4b8bad34c5f793618/PXL_20241211_173214145.jpg" />Carmen Amengual, A Non-coincidental Mirror, Three-channel video installation. Exhibition view, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, 2025.&nbsp; This project imaginatively reconstructs this unrealized venture through experimental storytelling, documentary forms, and installation strategies. Hybridizing the traditions of experimental and political cinema, A Non-Coincidental Mirror recontextualizes the Meetings as a key, though overlooked, episode in the history of Global South solidarities. The work is grounded in an archive the artist inherited from her mother, who collaborated with the organizers of the Meetings on the unfinished documentary project. From this micro-historical perspective, the research opens onto a larger story: one of solidarity networks, cultural ambition, and the historical forces that determined what could and could not be made. <img width="1656" height="1092" width_o="1656" height_o="1092" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/74bedb58b658e7ab84ad76cfde698567cfcef9d2ea4af727d43b6654afcc3852/241211EFrossard_SMellon_CAmengual_6986b.jpg" data-mid="237563536" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/74bedb58b658e7ab84ad76cfde698567cfcef9d2ea4af727d43b6654afcc3852/241211EFrossard_SMellon_CAmengual_6986b.jpg" />Carmen Amengual, A Non-coincidental Mirror, Three-channel video installation. Exhibition view, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, 2025. Photo by Etienne Frossard By weaving together archival research, oral histories, and a critical reading of Third Cinema films and manifestos, the project reconstructs not only events but also the dreams and contradictions that animated them. Anchored in the ethos of radical filmmaking, the project is experimental in form and method, probing the ghostly presences of the past and reactivating their emancipatory potential for present and future generations. At the core of Third World internationalism was a fragile but powerful optimism: the hope of finding a mirror in the emancipatory struggles of others. This project traces both its reach and its limits, offering a lived history of ideas that reverberates into present debates on culture and politics. It reflects on the revolutionary force of friendship and on the delicate networks these cultural agents sought to weave—rooted in the belief that cinema could enable oppressed peoples not only to recognize one another, but also to imagine and work together toward emancipation. <img width="1892" height="3133" width_o="1892" height_o="3133" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/95f91fe660d829ca9e394e2fb6867b89ff955d31dda4ebe81e290a613180b662/Amengual_Latent-Cinema_3.jpg" data-mid="179738283" border="0" data-scale="66" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/95f91fe660d829ca9e394e2fb6867b89ff955d31dda4ebe81e290a613180b662/Amengual_Latent-Cinema_3.jpg" /> <img width="1656" height="1104" width_o="1656" height_o="1104" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/220dde62c161f017cefd849c575a0c5d49a3f01d97dd42f307fa10b6d290e3ed/241211EFrossard_SMellon_CAmengual_7042b.jpg" data-mid="237563529" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/220dde62c161f017cefd849c575a0c5d49a3f01d97dd42f307fa10b6d290e3ed/241211EFrossard_SMellon_CAmengual_7042b.jpg" />Carmen Amengual, A Non-coincidental Mirror, Three-channel video installation. Exhibition view, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, 2025.&nbsp;Photo by Etienne Frossard <img width="1656" height="1105" width_o="1656" height_o="1105" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f82013f1fff062f22e075b23af331498a72da507d11beca626ea1b74b86cfbf/241211EFrossard_SMellon_CAmengual_7009b.jpg" data-mid="237563540" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f82013f1fff062f22e075b23af331498a72da507d11beca626ea1b74b86cfbf/241211EFrossard_SMellon_CAmengual_7009b.jpg" />Carmen Amengual, A Non-coincidental Mirror, Three-channel video installation. Exhibition view, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, 2025. Photo by Etienne Frossard https://amengualcarmen.com/Kinetic-Lullaby-PR Thu, 12 Jan 2023 19:44:43 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/Kinetic-Lullaby-PR KINETIC LULLABY JUNE 9 -JULY 16 NYSS DUMBO GALLERY 20 JAY STREET # 307 BROOKLYN, NY 11201 CARMEN AMENGUAL, ọMọLOLÚ REFILWE BABÁTÚNDÉ, LIA KUCERA MERCEDES MATTER, DANA NGUY.N, FERNANDO MANUEL OLIVIA MCKAYLA ROSS, SAKI SATO.&nbsp; CO-CURATED BY ALISON CAUSER &amp; DARLA MIGAN @VARIABLETERMS&nbsp; What does it mean to be reared in a world that demands we violently tear ourselves into bits and bytes, shattering the embodied psyche’s longing for memory and rest? How can we endure the ceaseless cutting up of self/soul delineated by categories intended to kill off our capacity for unalienated pleasure and political action? The eight artists in KINETIC LULLABY work in the mediums of sound, printed word, painting, sculpture, and lens-based practices to dare to remember and dream, to code mytho-logical powers, to acknowledge tortuous labors as well as spiritual holism. Briefly this summer, we are holding our fragments together.&nbsp; In the midst of our ongoing global pandemic we remain captive to genocidal logics evidenced by vaccine apartheid, new wars, and the assault on womxn’s reproductive rights. There has also been a noticeable rise in rates of premature death correlated with increased isolation, general anxiety about the future, and the growing awareness of environmental precarity demanding our attention. Vehicular accidents are killing an overwhelming number of Black pedestrians in the U.S.; just as rural farmers worldwide succumb to hopelessness due to economic inflation; and unprecedented rates of suicide (among children ages ten to fourteen) shock the mental health industry.&nbsp; The queer Black Carribean analysis of artist and cyberdoula Olivia McKayla Ross searches for a way to make it make sense. Through pop choreographies her desire takes on mythological power inspired by the relationship between electronic video, sanity, and vanity. Deep fantasy means instagram filters, glamour magic, and mirrors, but also anxieties of video transmission: immersion, absorption, surveillance, and control. The poet-programmer’s sense-making moves from the underwater/under-seen archipelago, her own marronage from the algorithm’s caged reduction.&nbsp; Fernando Manuel’s Recordando el Alma allegorically embodies the trace of a spiritual practice by documenting childhood memories that would otherwise be irretrievable without the use of their camera. By unifying the whispering past with bodily abstraction, the artist invokes forms emerging between spiritual ecstasies and a mostly forgotten suburban plaza in Hialeah.&nbsp; My studio visit in upstate New York with artist Saki Sato overwhelmed me with feelings that surfaced as I gently held the artist’s small sculptures. Recalling a certain animated character buried deep in my own subconscious made me feel exposed yet safe. I was transported back to memories of being a latchkey kid at age ten or eleven–still young enough to watch PBS cartoons, but also old enough to look forward to afternoon talk shows like Oprah and Ricki Lake. Sato’s sculptures embrace the spirit of a time just before racing to the dial-up modem became our only after-school activity.&nbsp; The surround of the ongoing emergency only heightened by the global pandemic is part of the long durée of what Hortense Spillers calls the “steady state” of crisis as opposed to thinking crisis as a state of exception.1 This means that regimes of (neo)colonialism and (neo)liberalism sliding into new fascisms, have only benefited from pandemic conditions. In 1963 the abstract expressionist painter and New York Studio School founder Mercedes Matter wrote: “Today, it is possible for a student to go through art school and gain an acute perception of “what is going on,” a fairly intelligent grasp of the situation, and yet never have departed a single step from his original naïveté of vision…[B]ut ironically, while handing him the gift of freedom with one hand, the modern school snatches away from him with the other the circumstances in which this exacting labor of self-confronting can take place: the time to work.”2 By time to work, I hear Matter (still) calling our attention to practice– specifically, the time needed to develop the skills and patience necessary to discover what is most important about and indistinguishable between art and life.&nbsp; In Fingerprint of the Universe, conceptual artist Dana Nguy.n carves frames from the wood of a tree called by two names on either side an ocean important to her life story. To hold and honor her separated family as a first–gen kid, a ritual encircling of imperial and personal histories occurs-– connecting hands and fingers to tree rings and galaxies. Fire has also been an important source of inspiration for the artist. Witnessing life turning to stardust, Nguy.n creates an altar-like situation with a rare black beach sand of Norcal freeing themselves to love on their own terms.&nbsp; Lia Kucera’s mixed media exploration of matrilineal inheritances meditates on one of the most intimate relationships: the formation of her attitude towards her own body. In the artist’s recent practice, inspired by Latoya Ruby Fraizer’s The Notion of Family series (2001-14), Kucera went back to her own family home to physically build a symbolic gift of bodily agency. The artist's former high school campus sets the stage of public address and for recalibrating mother daughter bonds.&nbsp; Carmen Amengual’s mobile sculpture considers how extractive labor and attention economies exhaust the political capacities of the body and transform it into a subject and object of consumption. The piece is a meditation on the longing for a political capacity for action that would allow the body to recover from exhaustion. Through its textual component “Una fuerza que venga y me una, una voz que articule mis demandas,'' the piece invites the viewer to consider what forces must be conjured to transform this passive position of consumption to one of action and intervention.&nbsp; The artist ọmọlolú refilwe babátúndé’s for d.love arranges song, spoken word, and collaged moving image. Unfolding like a dreamy ode to resting in nature, we witness the tops of tall trees superimposed with streams of flowing river water. Foamy ocean shorelines swirl or are seen running vertically, then horizontally on screen. Paired sunsets appear at different moments and angles, perhaps from different evenings and in multiple locations as the artist embraces the whole sky’s fiery orange and indigos. How often we forget the brilliance of foliage, moon, and water or that there are countless ways to love. A prayerful poem rises from the language of a saved voicemail of a friend, sliding bass strums and the singer’s voice, the most ancient instrument, opens dimensions to let in grace. Across multiple sense registers, babátúndé's video practice sounds out an attunement for grounding ourselves right here, right now. 1 Hortense Spillers, “Time and Crisis: Questions for Psychoanalysis and Race,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy Vol. XXVI, No 2 (2018), 25-31. 2 Mercedes Matter, “What’s Wrong with the U.S. Art Schools, ARTNEWS, 1963. CONTACT: DARLA@VARIABLETERMS.COM https://amengualcarmen.com/Before-my-your-her-his-our-your-their-faces Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:25:34 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/Before-my-your-her-his-our-your-their-faces works Before my, your, her, his, our, your, their faces Delante de mis, tus, sus, nuestros, vuestros, sus rostros2022 As with many countries in what is currently known as the Global South, 1973 was a pivotal year in Argentina. The return of General Perón, after 17 years in exile and the prohibition of his party, generated big hopes among a very active and highly organized leftist movement. The hopes were short-lived. The September 11th coup in Chile, and Perón’s conservative turn quickly proved that Christian conservative alliances, and the definitive U.S. intervention in South America would ensure the prevention of any socialist developments in the region. Before my, your, her, his, our, your, their faces is a three channel video installation that looks at this period based on a set of letters that the artist’s mother received from friends while she was living in Paris, and later, in Algiers. The voices in the letters discuss some of these major historical events - alongside personal matters. Their language depicts a complex landscape of affective textures, one that speaks of how subjective positions arose from a collision with historical events, and of how micro-political emancipatory drives intertwined with macro-political and collective movements. By once again giving texture to these letters’ language -through animation, songs and textual strategies- the piece is a reflection on the historical nature of our present. Through amplifying these voices’ echoes, their hopes and contradictions, it seeks to articulate the historical riddle they were entangled with. Its aftermath is our present. May the crumbles of their dreams give us a sense of orientation. <img width="2400" height="1600" width_o="2400" height_o="1600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/52333bf10f5ba914faee0addf96cb2e6db0684d46c17601509eeac95e3128c69/Everything-is-common_Artists-Space_2022_64.jpg" data-mid="164276624" border="0" data-scale="92" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/52333bf10f5ba914faee0addf96cb2e6db0684d46c17601509eeac95e3128c69/Everything-is-common_Artists-Space_2022_64.jpg" />Before my, your, her, his, our, your, their faces,&nbsp;2022.&nbsp;Installation view. Everything is Common, Whitney ISP 2021-22 Studio Program Exhibition,&nbsp;Artists Space, New York, 2022. Image credit: Steven Cottingham <img width="2130" height="1456" width_o="2130" height_o="1456" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/859ef419b2e93a0e13dcfbc15bc439fc6ad3d55e7a2f1b70a4e974812113a335/Tres-3T_Composite_Website.png" data-mid="164290498" border="0" data-scale="92" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/859ef419b2e93a0e13dcfbc15bc439fc6ad3d55e7a2f1b70a4e974812113a335/Tres-3T_Composite_Website.png" /> Carmen Amengual, Before my, your, her, his, our, your, their faces, 2022 Stills from video. <img width="2272" height="1498" width_o="2272" height_o="1498" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/045eb5d6d68e2e5f29ae98b4a2c02c6e422f8a6936fc77f44f46df3da07a60d3/Screen-Shot-2023-01-10-at-1.13.09-PM.png" data-mid="164278202" border="0" data-scale="91" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/045eb5d6d68e2e5f29ae98b4a2c02c6e422f8a6936fc77f44f46df3da07a60d3/Screen-Shot-2023-01-10-at-1.13.09-PM.png" /> &nbsp;&nbsp; Before my, your, her, his, our, your, their faces, 2022.&nbsp;Exhibition brochure. https://amengualcarmen.com/Una-fuerza-que-venga Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:25:22 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/Una-fuerza-que-venga WORKS Una fuerza que venga y me una, una voz que articule mis demandas2022 Installation for the group exhibition Kinetic Lullaby, curated by Alison Causer and Darla Migan at NYSS Dumbo Gallery, Brooklyn <img width="1126" height="1788" width_o="1126" height_o="1788" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/13e51a1188d411def0f49f57bc8c84fa58d4b4d5112411d15d25c1b388150d4c/Screen-Shot-2023-01-31-at-9.32.15-PM.png" data-mid="166854901" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/13e51a1188d411def0f49f57bc8c84fa58d4b4d5112411d15d25c1b388150d4c/Screen-Shot-2023-01-31-at-9.32.15-PM.png" /> Una fuerza que venga y me una, May a force come and bring me together, 2022, installation view. Kinetic Lullaby, NYSS Dumbo Gallery, Brooklyn. Excerpt from curatorial text [full&nbsp;text here]What does it mean to be reared in a world that demands we violently tear ourselves into bits and bytes, shattering the embodied psyche’s longing for memory and rest? How can we endure the ceaseless cutting up of self/soul delineated by categories intended to kill off our capacity for unalienated pleasure and political action? The eight artists in KINETIC LULLABY work in the mediums of sound, printed word, painting, sculpture, and lens-based practices to dare to remember and dream, to code mytho-logical powers, to acknowledge tortuous labors as well as spiritual holism. Briefly this summer, we are holding our fragments together. [...] Carmen Amengual’s mobile sculpture considers how extractive labor and attention economies exhaust the political capacities of the body and transform it into a subject and object of consumption. The piece is a meditation on the longing for a political capacity for action that would allow the body to recover from exhaustion. Through its&nbsp;textual component “Una fuerza que venga y me una, una voz que articule mis demandas,'' the piece invites the viewer to consider what forces must be conjured to transform this passive position of consumption to one of action and intervention. <img width="2264" height="1522" width_o="2264" height_o="1522" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/743ce0be5b15ff978a91c808cbf515ba772f217c7355e0fcae320cfddffb54a5/Screen-Shot-2023-01-31-at-9.32.36-PM.png" data-mid="166854902" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/743ce0be5b15ff978a91c808cbf515ba772f217c7355e0fcae320cfddffb54a5/Screen-Shot-2023-01-31-at-9.32.36-PM.png" />Una fuerza que venga y me una, May a force come and bring me together, 2022, installation view. Kinetic Lullaby, NYSS Dumbo Gallery, Brooklyn. https://amengualcarmen.com/Fragments-of-Algiers Tue, 24 Dec 2019 03:08:30 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/Fragments-of-Algiers WORKS Fragments from Algiers&nbsp; 2019&nbsp; <img width="1518" height="1142" width_o="1518" height_o="1142" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b7e120dcf3bf1de434e76888c18f49611885b60402f3e3bc82fc0728ac6eab35/Screen-Shot-2020-01-22-at-9.10.03-AM.png" data-mid="59204301" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b7e120dcf3bf1de434e76888c18f49611885b60402f3e3bc82fc0728ac6eab35/Screen-Shot-2020-01-22-at-9.10.03-AM.png" />Carmen Amengual, Fragments from Algiers, 2019. Super 8 to digital, 4:52 min. <img width="2192" height="1596" width_o="2192" height_o="1596" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2c55ef3af03dc5e43c893f3c43ebbaca4b95968475d2fe5be0e1245b923d98f1/Screen-Shot-2020-01-22-at-9.11.23-AM.png" data-mid="59204302" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2c55ef3af03dc5e43c893f3c43ebbaca4b95968475d2fe5be0e1245b923d98f1/Screen-Shot-2020-01-22-at-9.11.23-AM.png" /> Carmen Amengual, Fragments from Algiers, 2019. Super 8 to digital, 4:52 min. <img width="1466" height="1088" width_o="1466" height_o="1088" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f54434454830d3b473d418c83401910409772fa66c5d3889b84677b9aaf2eac1/Screen-Shot-2020-01-22-at-9.09.52-AM.png" data-mid="59204300" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f54434454830d3b473d418c83401910409772fa66c5d3889b84677b9aaf2eac1/Screen-Shot-2020-01-22-at-9.09.52-AM.png" /> Carmen Amengual, Fragments from Algiers, 2019. Super 8 to digital, 4:52 min. Fragments from Algiers (2019) is a four-minute Super 8 film that stemmed from an encounter with my mother’s archive from her year in Algeria in the 1970s. This piece inaugurated my multi-year research-based project about the first Third World Filmmakers Meeting, held in Algiers in 1973. The work does not attempt to reconstruct history in a linear sense, but to reactivate the textures of what was left behind: folded letters, envelopes, official stamps, credentials, photographs, and clippings. Filmed in black and white, the camera hovers and moves restlessly across these surfaces, too quickly to permit reading, privileging material presence over informational content. The archive is treated less as evidence than as a living field of affect and memory. A single letter, subtitled on screen, anchors the work: a note from filmmakers Jorge Giannoni and Susana Sichel in 1974. Writing from Buenos Aires, they describe the challenges of sustaining the momentum of the Third World Filmmakers Meeting held in Algiers the previous year. The correspondence evokes a larger collective project: an unfinished documentary on anti-colonial struggles that my mother was meant to help realize, but which never came to be. https://amengualcarmen.com/Only-a-truncated-and-Imaginary-Vision Sat, 28 Dec 2019 03:23:57 +0000 Carmen Amengual https://amengualcarmen.com/Only-a-truncated-and-Imaginary-Vision WORKS Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision (2019) This installation forms part of Fragments from Algiers, a series of works investigating the first Third World Filmmakers Meeting, held in Algiers in 1973. At its center, a still image of the Sahara desert, unearthed in the filmmakers’ archive, is projected through a peephole, forcing the viewer into an intimate yet partial encounter. The image looms within the exhibition space like a fragment of memory, an apparition both concrete and elusive. Accompanying the projection is a sound composition by the artist that layers and interlaces cicada calls recorded across different continents. The cicada’s voice functions as metaphor: a signal of generational awakening after long periods of dormancy, echoing the spirit of Third World solidarity that animated the 1970s. At the same time, its repetitive cadence recalls the mechanical rhythm of a film projector, collapsing natural and technological sound into one. Through this interplay, image and sound conjure the fragility and persistence of unfinished histories. The work suggests the sensation of a mirage, half-seen, both real and imagined, while reflecting on the ever-open possibility of unearthing collective dreams and revolutionary projects that remain latent. Presented in 2019 at Biquini Wax ESP, Mexico City, in an exhibition organized by Kirsten Mairead Gill. <img width="2684" height="1552" width_o="2684" height_o="1552" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2743b7246189b435d4ef8bbd8762c85f9f90853ffaef59506f6be4f9833d836c/Port_Tropes_2020.jpg" data-mid="63030658" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2743b7246189b435d4ef8bbd8762c85f9f90853ffaef59506f6be4f9833d836c/Port_Tropes_2020.jpg" /> Carmen Amengual, Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision, Digital projection. Installation view, Biquini Wax ESP, in Mexico City, 2019 Carmen Amengual, Cicadas # 1: Mirage - Haunting. Sound, 56 min. 2019(5 min. excerpt) <img width="1400" height="1778" width_o="1400" height_o="1778" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/37341e21a3d6997f7aba36f1f750ce9529afede605004e9d43a6919cc4597771/BW1_Cicadas_2018.png" data-mid="164726956" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/37341e21a3d6997f7aba36f1f750ce9529afede605004e9d43a6919cc4597771/BW1_Cicadas_2018.png" /> Carmen Amengual, Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision, Digital projection. Installation view, Biquini Wax ESP, in Mexico City, 2019 <img width="1407" height="1790" width_o="1407" height_o="1790" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/49409e55b9fb08fa7709403cb8d97bb76240f313c701e8888cabe8301168faf7/BW2_Cicadas_2019.png" data-mid="164726957" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/49409e55b9fb08fa7709403cb8d97bb76240f313c701e8888cabe8301168faf7/BW2_Cicadas_2019.png" /> Carmen Amengual, Only a Truncated and Imaginary Vision, Digital projection. Installation view, Biquini Wax ESP, in Mexico City, 2019