SUR 2021

September 18 — DECember 04, 2021

Is it possible to analyze one’s own identity? Is it possible to stand to one side and do the same for ones encompassing culture/s? These are questions essential to the SUR project. No answers are necessarily found here but the need to clarify the right questions to ask is fundamental.

The 6th SUR:biennial at Torrance Art Museum assembles a lineup of artists whose works intersect the spaces between contemplative contemporary perspectives and representing and investigating pluralistic cultural heritages hailing from Mexico, Central America, and South America while living in Southern California, Oregon, and New York.  As the Curators for the 2021 edition we consciously attended to a search for a diversity of thought, in a non-monumentalizing fashion, to explore the myriad of directions that artists are working within to explore the boundaries of these location/heritage dichotomies. Our hope was to establish a non-homogenizing, nor cliched, reflection upon the diverse ways artists are balancing and exploring this dynamic. 

All art is identity in one sense, of course - as it always reflects the maker to some extent - but in this exhibition we can acknowledge this as a constantly shifting mask, in flux, worn to reflect context. These artists fuse artistic traditions from these cultures with current artistic perspectives to establish and celebrate, while also critiquing, notions of specific Latinx, Latin American, Xicana/o (Chicana/o) cultural identities and redefining identities within these designations.

It can also be said that these artists are perhaps describing identities that have not yet been forecast, identities possibly physically, mentally or spiritually inhabiting multiple cultural locations at once, simultaneously close to and at a distance from the artists’ influences, re-territorialized by the artists for the spaces of the Torrance Art Museum.  

- Ismael de Anda III and Max Presneill, co-curators 2021 SUR:biennial for TAM

The 2021 SUR: biennial at Torrance Art Museum featured artists: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Marisa Caichiolo, Pete Hoffecker Mejia, Frankie Orozco, The Perez Bros., Carolina Sardi, Jimena Sarno.

Founded in 2011, SUR: biennial features independently-curated exhibitions that showcase recent and newly-commissioned works by local and international artists who have been influenced by the cultures and artistic traditions of Mexico, Central & South America, and the Caribbean.

Exhibition Photos