25 – 28 August 2022
proyectoamil
Ardez
proyectoamil is pleased to present the video performance Niña aprendiendo a pelear y jugando ajedrez [Girl Learning to Fight and Playing Chess] by the Peruvian artist Elena Tejada-Herrera as part of this year’s edition of the St. Moritz Art Film Festival SMAFF in Switzerland initiating an annual collaboration between the two institutions. In this video, directed and edited by the artist, a karate girl learns to defend herself and also plays chess against strong, colorful, and strategic gorillas.
Elena´s trans-disciplinary work is known for its experimental and hybrid nature. She conceives her participatory practice as cultural exchanges and during the last three years, has organized self-defense training workshops for people who self-identify as women and for girls within the context of her exhibitions. She seeks to facilitate cultural exchanges and empower people with her work. In Peru, she introduced risky and irruptive performances to protest against the Fujimori dictatorship.
The St. Moritz Art Film Festival SMAFF was founded in 2020 as a non-profit association, with the declared intent of organizing a national and international cinema and audio-visual festival in St.Moritz and the Swiss Engadin Valley and of fostering the dissemination of cinema, art, and audiovisual culture at the cantonal, national and international level. The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and to promote international cinema in all its forms: visual art, video art, and films, as a coherent audio-visual expression, in the spirit of freedom and dialogue.
About the artist
Elena Tejada-Herrera was born in Perú. She obtained a degree in painting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Elena earned a full scholarship from the School of the Arts of Virginia Commonwealth University and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Painting, Printmaking, and Extended Media. Elena obtained a certificate in socially engaged art from New York’s multi-disciplinary space The Kitchen in collaboration with Sarah Lawrence College. Additionally, she received a Trustee’s Full Merit Scholarship offered by the Department of Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated with an interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in media arts and technology.
Tejada-Herrera’s oeuvre has earned her a range of awards and recognitions and her experimental work has been cited in reference books.
Elena has participated in more than 200 international exhibitions around the world, including solo exhibitions, historical retrospectives of Latin American art and contemporary art in museums and other institutions, and international biennales such as the 11th Berlin Biennale 2020, Berlin, Germany; Frieze art fair 2019, London, United Kingdom, the traveling exhibition Arte # vida, arte de Acción en las Américas, organized by El Museo del Barrio, New York, among others.
About proyectoamil
Founded in 2010, proyectoamil is a mobile and fluid contemporary art platform, operating both in Lima and Ardez, that aims to act as a bridge between the Peruvian and international art scenes. In its twelve years of sustained activity, proyectoamil has hosted exhibitions, commissioned artistic interventions, edited publications, and art records, and facilitated a rich arrange of public programs, events, and residencies. Its mission is to allow both internationally renowned as well as emerging artists to find a way to materialize their projects, creating a space open for young and alternative artistic production.
