FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Miami, FL - August 2015

The exhibition, Intersections (after Lautréamont), opening on September 3 at CIFO Art Space, offers the opportunity to appreciate the works created by the award-winning artists of the thirteenth edition of CIFO’s Grants & Commissions Program (2015).

“Our commitment to support Latin American contemporary artists remains intact, facilitating better working conditions for the award-winning artists to execute their creative projects. In this thirteenth edition of our Grants & Commissions Program, we have increased the designated resources and we are very proud to help these artists to strengthen their work.”

 Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, President of CIFO

Recurrently, for awhile now, the media has been referring to Miami as the “capital of Latin America” and it has become commonplace for its residents to call it this way. Given the city’s construction boom and the vigor that has incorporated into the cultural and business fields, during July of last year, a headline in the New York Times announced: “Influx of South Americans Drives Miami’s Reinvention.”

“Caught in the dilemma between being the edge and the top, between being surface and symbol, the idea of reinventing Miami as ‘the capital of Latin America’ can be problematic. A sense of belonging and spreading roots have gained authority over the stereotypes of ‘the city of sun and frivolity’ or ‘the nostalgic city of temporary refuge.’ While that does not exclude the risk of replacing old labels with new, seen from another perspective, the willingness of acceptance, and even pride, in becoming ‘another capital for Latin Americans’ is remarkable.” said Eugenio Valdés Figueroa, CIFO’s new director.

According to Valdés Figueroa, this is the framework for recontextualizing ten projects of Latin American art that are brought together within the exhibition. As with the previous twelve editions, the program emphasizes the stimulation of experimental and multidisciplinary work. Simultaneously, the selective process samples emergent artistic production from Latin America, while also recognizing the work of established and mid-career artists.

Some of the leading figures of Dada and Proto-Surrealism identified themselves during the second and third decade of the twentieth century with the famous phrase by the Count of Lautréamont: “Beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella.”

The title of the exhibition, Intersections (after Lautréamont), “refers to the notion of beauty and how, during each era, art is responsible for reformulating, subverting, and/or proposing alternative ways of understanding beauty. There is no single criteria in the exhibition, opening spaces for tense intersections, armed with both correspondence and friction,” says Valdés Figueroa, “Placing the questions raised by the works of this year’s winners through the prism of this new juncture in the city that hosts them, could produce moments of estrangement, disturbing crossroads, poetic collisions. That is already an initial point of convergence, among other possible intersections offered by this exhibition: on one hand, the changes produced in the Miami scene in relation to Latin America; on the other hand, the wide range of concerns that occupy the award-winning artists.”

The mission of CIFO’s Grants & Commissions Program is to bestow ten Latin American artists with grants: six grants for emerging artists, three grants for mid-career artists, and a special award for one established artist. These grants are given directly to the winners, thus providing them with greater flexibility to develop their work. Artists are nominated by the Advisory Committee, composed of recognized art professionals, curators, and artists from Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Following a rigorous review process by the Selection Committee, the finalists are approved by the Board of Directors. CIFO’s Grants & Commissions Program, has supported during the past twelve editions over one hundred artists, resulting in a significant boost for the majority of their careers.

The thirteenth edition features newly commissioned works by Adrián Balseca (Ecuador), Domingo Castillo (El Salvador, U.S.A.), Javier Castro (Cuba), Alice Miceli (Brazil), Nascimento/Lovera (Venezuela), and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (Guatemala) in the emerging artist category; Iván Argote (Colombia), Silvia Gruner (Mexico), and Pablo Vargas Lugo (Mexico) in the mid-career artist category; and Leandro Katz (Argentina) in the established artists category.

For the third consecutive year, CIFO continues their collaboration with the Cannonball Artist Residency Program. This year, Alice Miceli (Brazil) and Javier Castro (Cuba) will live and work for two months at Cannonball’s facilities.

The exhibition, Intersections (after Lautréamont), will open to the public on September 3 and will run until November 1 of this year, at CIFO Art Space, located at 1018 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida 33136.

Opening Night
September 3, 2015
Guided tour by the artists | 6 p.m.
Reception | 7 p.m.

Regular exhibition hours
September 4, 2015 - November 1, 2015
Thursday - Friday | Noon - 6 p.m.
Saturday - Sunday | 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Open Free to the public

For more information about the exhibition and the artists, please visit cifo.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter | @cifoart 

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