ALA (noun)
[A-LA]: ART LATIN AMERICA
Ala Projects is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition, Act I: The Showcase, featuring seven emerging Latin American artists: Gabriela Agreda, Jonathan Carela, Laura Castro, Gustavo Ghavami, Andrea Grau, Victoria Martinez,and Luca Otamendi.
Curated by Ala founder Amanda Garcia, Act I aims to illuminate the array of artists, styles, mediums, and conceptual approaches that Ala will feature in its periodic hybrid exhibitions. Here, we showcase works by emerging and mid-career artists who explore myriad themes, from Laura’s examination and reconstruction of identity, memories, and relationships erased by colonialism in the Dominican Republic; to Gustavo’s admiration for manual labor, its associated agency and power to transform our surroundings; to Victoria paying homage to her Mexican-American heritage through textile-based, public art-inspired installations.
Displayed in various formats, from Jonathan’s collage paintings on paper and maximalist works on canvas, to Gabriela's experimentation with cement, oil painting, and photography, each artist brings a unique perspective and materiality to their work.
Andrea explores printing and pigments on jacquard woven textiles, while Luca integrates graphic design elements and materials to depict his memories through sounds on canvas.
This initial exhibition underlines the breadth of themes and inquiries being championed by this generation of emerging artists, whether based in the US or their home countries.
Being Latin American, we are united by commonalities such as language – albeit with completely distinct tonalities, words, expressions, degrees of fluency or bilingualism – but our histories (colonial, post-colonial, neo-colonial), struggles, challenges, opportunities, are diverse and vary widely.
Ala endeavors to provide a platform to showcase our talent, but also our individual experiences, contributions, depictions, and questioning, painting a more contemporary and nuanced portrayal of Latin America and its diaspora today.
Gabriela Agreda is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Venezuela. Upon completing her studies in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she relocated to New York City, where she is based today.
Gabriela’s practice delves into the complex socio-political climate of her birth country. Not bound by a single approach; she fluidly explores diverse themes, materials, and processes connected to this central investigation. She utilizes simple yet powerful materials such as personal photographs, wood, and cement to evoke intimate engagement with the lived experiences of ordinary Venezuelans affected by political turmoil.
With a focus on the reorganization and experimental presentation of photographs initially captured impulsively, Agreda is fascinated by how meaning evolves from the original moment of image-taking to subsequent moments of artistic engagement and display in various mediums.
Gabriela’s work has been featured in The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), Mana Contemporary, PS408 Studios, and SAIC Galleries.
Jonathan Carela is a Dominican interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. His work is informed by personal and shared experiences in the quotidian Dominican landscapes, both urban and rural, mimicking aspects of these environments.
His artistic practice serves as a ground for self-discovery through questioning human behavior and social structures within the Caribbean. He reimagines environments and social interactions anchored in a discursive exploration of contemporary socio-economical, racial, and identity issues.
Exploring the inherent discomfort of these subject matters, he tears them down in search of resistance and freedom through thought-provoking representations of reappropriated spaces for collective joy and celebration.
Carela’s work has been exhibited across the Dominican Republic, New York and Miami; his work was also recently shown at (RCAH) Michigan State University’s “Unbound” exhibition created by The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.
Laura Castro is an artist, researcher, and independent curator who lives and works in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Through her practice, she examines notions of identity and the relationship with the past produced by historical discourses from the Caribbean territory.
She was a co-founder and co-director of the curatorial platform Sindicato (2013-2020), a graduate of the De Appel Curatorial Program (2020-2021), and a recipient of the Young Curators Residency Program Madrid from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (2022). Laura’s work is part of private and institutional collections in the Dominican Republic, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Madrid, Mexico City and Buenos Aires.
Her work has also been included in major international exhibitions such as Relational Undercurrents, Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago at MOLAA, L.A., as part of the wider network of exhibitions Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, and World Wide Storefront, Storefront for Art and Architecture, NY. Her art fair participations include Untitled Miami, MecaRD, Zona Maco, Arco Madrid, ArtBo, ArteBA.
Gustavo Ghavami is a Puerto Rican born, Miami-raised artist and industrial designer exploring the boundaries of craft and manufacturing.
Gustavo’s work is informed by a profound admiration for manual labor, its associated agency, and the power it holds to transform our surroundings – literally, and through its inherent impact on our social fabric.
His artistic endeavors stretch across various mediums, with a particular focus on re-contextualizing everyday materials — often construction-related — into thought-provoking pieces. By challenging the conventional use of materials, Gustavo seeks to blur the lines between functionality and artistic expression in building.
Gustavo holds a Bachelor from Florida State University and an MID from the Pratt Institute. He lives and works in New York City.
Andrea Grau is a Peruvian multimedia artist based in Chicago. Through the blend of organic and unconventional materials, her work explores themes of identity, memory, chaos, pain, and love.
Her practice has been influenced by her cultural background, which guides her to delve deeper into the infinite possibilities within fibers and the loom, exploring repetition, cycles, intimacy, and personal experience.
Holding a BFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Andrea was part of both the Painting and Drawing Department and the Fiber and Material Studies Department. She has previously exhibited her work at SAIC Galleries in Chicago and is now excited to share her art with new audiences.
Victoria Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist who honors her Mexican-American ancestry through textile-based projects including installation, painting, and printmaking. Her work is inspired by public art, ancient sites, architecture, and the urban environment.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Mexican Art, Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, and Morris Adjmi Architects in New York City.
Martinez currently has a major solo show on view at the Chicago Cultural Center titled “Braiding Histories”, which spans from small brick sculptures to large-scale painting.
The artist holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in Painting and Printmaking. Upcoming projects include an artist residency at The Fountainhead Residency in Miami, Florida and an artist residency with Azul Arena in Juárez, Mexico
Growing up in a family of musicians, Luca Otamendi’s practice explores how sound comes to life in the visual arts.
His academic pursuits in fine arts at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Graphic Design at the Caracas Design Institute reinforced his fascination with geometric abstraction, architecture, and the range optical and kinetic masters emanating from his homeland in the former century.
Due to the tumultuous sociopolitical climate of his country, he was forced to relocate to the U.S., where he began integrating the precision of graphic design and the fluidity of musical rhythms with playful palettes inspired by Venezuelan landscapes of his childhood. In exploring these visual juxtapositions, his practice offers a resilient echo of a homeland yearned for despite the distance imposed by exile.
