ektor garcia
b. 1985, Red Bluff, California
Lives in Mexico, New York, and elsewhere
Venue
Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans
900 Camp Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Monday, 11 AM–5 PM
Tuesday, closed
Wednesday–Sunday, 11 AM–5 PM
Neighborhood
Downtown/Central Business District (CBD)
About the project
ektor garcia works across a variety of handcraft techniques to produce visceral sculptural installations that index their making and, indirectly, the artist’s life and travels. For Prospect.5 garcia presents a body of crochet sculptures he made in New Orleans and Mexico City over the last year. The artist creates metal knots utilizing a textile practice that has been passed down to him through his matriarchal line. The ephemerality of the fabrics referenced in his work and the kind of generational knowledge that shapes this project––and our lives more broadly––is challenged by the permanent nature of the artist’s materials, which include bronze, copper, and aluminum.
The artist has repeatedly used the image of butterflies in his crochet works. Frequently traveling between the United States and Mexico, he celebrates the beauty of butterflies as delicate migratory creatures. Mariposa, the Spanish word for butterfly, is also a derogatory term for queer men in Mexico. Embracing this symbol and this term, garcia acts in defiance against the homophobia he has experienced in both countries. He centers instead the transformative nature of the butterfly. As garcia constantly works while traveling, his practice represents an evolving embodiment of his life, informed by conditions, circumstances, and decisions that are continually unfolding.
About the artist
ektor garcia’s practice utilizes craftwork connected to his own biography and cultural inheritance, including queer culture and traditional Mexican craft. Individual works and installations make use of deeply varied textures, techniques, and materials side-by-side, such as lace, weaving, and crochet, as well as ceramics and metalwork. His pieces can be at once sensual, evoking the human body, as well as reference architectural and natural forms. Conceptually speaking, his work subtly conveys historical and biographical narratives counterposed with brutal political commentary on those same subjects. His pieces often give the impression of a collection of family heirlooms or exhumed artifacts, suggesting an embedded past and future in each object. His work has been exhibited in solo shows at the SculptureCenter, New York (2019), and Cooper Cole, Toronto (2019), and in group exhibitions at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, Aspen, Colorado (2019); LAXART, Los Angeles (2018); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2017). garcia earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2014) and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, New York (2016).
ektor garcia, ppportales mariposas, 2021. Lost-wax cast aluminum and bronze, crochet copper wire, dimensions variable. Installation view: Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Alex Marks