Rodrigo Valenzuela in conversation with Marcela Guerrero

About

Join us in celebrating our exhibition Rodrigo Valenzuela: New Works for a Post Worker’s World, opening Sept. 21! Artist Rodrigo Valenzuela and Marcela Guerrero, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, will discuss the artist’s work across photography, sculpture, installation, and video. The discussion will focus on how Valenzuela’s experiences as an immigrant in the United States have shaped his concepts of class and labor as well as his trajectory as an artist. This event will be recorded and posted to BRIC's YouTube at a later date. 

SPEAKER BIOS

Rodrigo Valenzuela (he/him; born in 1982, Santiago, Chile; based in Los Angeles, CA) has presented solo exhibitions at the New Museum and Asya Geisberg Gallery, both NY; Light Work, Syracuse, NY; University of South Florida, Tampa, FL; Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, CA; Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA; Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles, CA; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR; and the Portland Art Museum and UPFOR, both Portland, OR. He has participated in group exhibitions at The Kitchen, The Drawing Center, Wave Hill, and CUE Art Foundation, all NY; Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FL; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, among others. He has also exhibited his work in solo shows internationally at Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Peana Projects, Monterrey, NL, Mexico; Galería Patricia Ready and Museo de Arte Contemporàneo, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile; and Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer, Vienna, Austria. 

Valenzuela has participated in residencies at Dora Maar, Fountainhead, Light Work, MacDowell, Glassell School of Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Kala Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, Center for Photography at Woodstock, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is the recipient of the 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. His work is included in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Whitney Museum of American Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Frye Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. He is an Associate Professor and Head of the Photography Department at UCLA. Valenzuela received his BFA in Art History and Photography from the University of Chile, his BA in Philosophy from Evergreen State College, and his MFA in Photo/Media from the University of Washington. 

Marcela Guerrero (she/her) is the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. This fall, the Whitney presents two projects curated by Guerrero, no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, and Martine Gutierrez: Supremacy. Guerrero also helped organize Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945 and curated the exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art. Previously, Guerrero worked as Curatorial Fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the much-lauded exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as research coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and in art journals such as caa.reviews, ArtNexus, Caribbean Intransit: The Arts Journal, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and Diálogo. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.