Exhibition design for the Americas Society (NY)

I was hired by Gabriela Rangel, director of the Americas Society in New York, to design the exhibition for Victoria Cabezas and Priscilla Monge: Give Me What You Ask For.

Curated by Miguel A. López Give Me What You Ask For brings together the work of Victoria Cabezas (b. 1950) and Priscilla Monge (b. 1968) exploring how these Costa Rican artists challenge conventional art disciplines by drawing on their own experiences. The artists use experimental strategies to advocate for women and to critique established patriarchal structures. “

Cabezas and Monge mapped the Costa Rican art context from their distinctive yet irreverent perspectives of the body,” says Gabriela Rangel, director and chief curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society. “Pondering their paths helps recognize genealogies that show that women were to a large extent the catalysts for change in terms of the boundaries of the region’s contemporary art,” says exhibition curator Miguel A. López (TEOR/éTica and Lado V, San José, Costa Rica).

The design, very simple, consists in playing with the architecture elements of the space, that is the very sumptuos stone door frames that divide the 3 spaces of the exhibition space. There was an initial color scheme much wilder, but the curator thought it was too cliché Lantin American. It was not a cliché, I just love color... But I heard him.

In the first scheme as in the final one in warm yellow, color stops not where the walls meet but where the gorgeous door frames are. This very simple gesture gives a dinamism to the space, that to me is the core the design. The rest are disco pedestals and metal vitrines.

We chose the yellow from the previous scheme, which harmonized the best with the strong mahogany floors... I designed pedestals for the hanging overall (it turns out the artists had never thought about hanging them in space, always hanging it against the wall) and for the sculptural pieces. I thought also natural to install Priscilla Monge´s blue soap virgin on a pedestal, as they do in churches. Turns out she never thought about it :)) Poor virgin was always on the floor :)) And for some reason for the stuffed banana - as for the overall - I kept thinking about a disco tv program of the 60s with go-go dancers :)) I thought it was appropriate for this type of fun feminism :)) Introducing some curvy shapes inside the regimented boxes...

Looks like it worked out !!