ExhibitionFebruary 25, 2025
Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance
"Pleas of Resistance" is an exhibition that spans over 25 years of work by Carlos Motta, an artist who frequently uses the body and sexual dissidence as a site for political contestation and experimentation.
His most recent performances and video works are displayed alongside his early experiments with photographic self-portraiture. The show delves into brutality, silencing, and desires, Motta's artistic inquiry's scope, and its unwavering archive research rigor. From the conquest and colonial era in the Americas to the present, Motta's work questions the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies and examines the legacy of religion as a colonial perpetrator and unsettling tool.
In the late 1990s, just before moving to New York and living there, Motta began his artistic career at an early age. The show closely examines the artist's involvement with social movements and political histories, particularly the politics of gender and sexuality as well as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and how these have manifested in the present day about the fragility of bodies. Both individual and self-representation, as well as the several kinds of collaboration that the artist has realized in his varied projects over the years, are fundamentally shaped by the idea of the collective body and the artist's attention to the politics of care.
Motta's works challenge the hegemonic narratives of history, religion, and democracy. By rewriting the official histories of colonization, military dictatorships, and neo-fascism, his artistic partnerships and work materialize the possibility of social revolution in a spiritual, physical, and political pilgrimage.
His most recent performances and video works are displayed alongside his early experiments with photographic self-portraiture. The show delves into brutality, silencing, and desires, Motta's artistic inquiry's scope, and its unwavering archive research rigor. From the conquest and colonial era in the Americas to the present, Motta's work questions the imposition of Eurocentric epistemologies and examines the legacy of religion as a colonial perpetrator and unsettling tool.
In the late 1990s, just before moving to New York and living there, Motta began his artistic career at an early age. The show closely examines the artist's involvement with social movements and political histories, particularly the politics of gender and sexuality as well as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and how these have manifested in the present day about the fragility of bodies. Both individual and self-representation, as well as the several kinds of collaboration that the artist has realized in his varied projects over the years, are fundamentally shaped by the idea of the collective body and the artist's attention to the politics of care.
Motta's works challenge the hegemonic narratives of history, religion, and democracy. By rewriting the official histories of colonization, military dictatorships, and neo-fascism, his artistic partnerships and work materialize the possibility of social revolution in a spiritual, physical, and political pilgrimage.
Gallery
