After La vida nueva
Artists Space (online)August 8 – 31 2020
Video documentation, After La vida nueva, Artists Space (online), New York, week 1.
Curated by Weiyi Chang, Sofia Jamal, Colleen O’Connor, and Patricio Orellana, the 2019-20 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Featuring works by Amelia Bande, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab, Renée Green, Rummana Hussain, Caroline Key, Alan Michelson, Rashaad Newsome, Catalina Parra, Cici Wu, and Raúl Zurita.
Featuring works by Amelia Bande, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab, Renée Green, Rummana Hussain, Caroline Key, Alan Michelson, Rashaad Newsome, Catalina Parra, Cici Wu, and Raúl Zurita.
On a sunny, cloudless day in June 1982, five decommissioned World War II planes took off from Flushing Airport in Queens, New York. In white smoke-dots blotted across the sky, they typed out a poem, "La vida nueva", by the artist and poet Raúl Zurita as he and a group of friends and artists looked on. The work referenced the 1973 U.S.-led military coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and the subsequent dictatorship in Chile. After La vida nueva takes its name from this work of Zurita's and turns back to this era that was full of the promise and violence of the new, to bring us a sense of a moment in time lost and imperfectly recovered. Through video, installation, sculpture, poetry, performance and archival documentation, the works explore constructions of self and nation by sifting through the unstable terrain of the past. Drawing on histories and archives of feminist, queer, and Third World liberation movements and responding to the uneven forces of neoliberalization, the artists suggest the pursuit of a new life that is concomitant with new ways of being together.
Written by Weiyi Chang, Sofia Jamal, Colleen O’Connor, and Patricio Orellana, the 2019–20 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Editor: Joshua Lubin-Levy
Curatorial Instructor: Sadia Shirazi
Project Managers: Ella Viscardi, Joshua Lubin-Levy, and Sadia Shirazi
Designers: Nazlı Ercan and Hilary Greenbaum
Translator: Ezequiel Zaidenwerg
Printer: Spencer Printing
ISBN: 978-0-87427-168-3
Exhibition catalogue (English and Spanish):
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After La vida nueva, After La vida nueva: Book of Archives, and After La vida nueva: Book of Gossip accompanied the virtual exhibition that took place on Artists Space’s website from August 8–31, 2020. Featuring a curatorial essay, reproductions of archival materials, and interviews with artists and contributors to the exhibition, this catalogue was an extension of the exhibition in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was offered free for download and by mail in the United States.
Contributors include Amelia Bande, Alan Michelson, Cici Wu & Yong Soon Min, Rashaad Newsome, and Juan Queiroz.
Downloadable PDFs:
After La vida nueva
After La vida nueva: Book of Archives
After La vida nueva: Book of Gossip
After La vida nueva, After La vida nueva: Book of Archives, and After La vida nueva: Book of Gossip accompanied the virtual exhibition that took place on Artists Space’s website from August 8–31, 2020. Featuring a curatorial essay, reproductions of archival materials, and interviews with artists and contributors to the exhibition, this catalogue was an extension of the exhibition in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was offered free for download and by mail in the United States.
Contributors include Amelia Bande, Alan Michelson, Cici Wu & Yong Soon Min, Rashaad Newsome, and Juan Queiroz.
Downloadable PDFs:
After La vida nueva
After La vida nueva: Book of Archives
After La vida nueva: Book of Gossip
Funding Acknowledgement
Participation in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program was made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development for Artists grant and the British Columbia Arts Council’s Early Career Development Grant.
Participation in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program was made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development for Artists grant and the British Columbia Arts Council’s Early Career Development Grant.