curated by Florencia Portocarrero
11 August – 1 October 2016

Opening: Thursday 11 August, 7pm – 10pm

Proyecto AMIL
Centro Comercial Camino Real
Lima

LIMA… On 11 August 2016, Proyecto AMIL is pleased to present Elena Tejada-Herrera Videos From This Woman: Performance Documentation 1997-2010. This will be the first comprehensive exhibition in Lima by Elena Tejada-Herrera, a trans-disciplinary artist who works across the mediums of performance, installation, video, and social intervention.

The exhibition brings together 21 videos that document nearly a decade of performances made between Peru and the United States. The show title draws from the artist’s YouTube channel videosdestamujer which for years has been one of the virtual spaces that she has used to circulate her work, tackling the politics of subjectivity and its production- particularly within gender relations. While the exhibition provides a historical account of Tejada-Herrera’s work and the motives that traverse it, the main focus is on its most recognized form: performance.

From the beginning of her artistic practice in the late nineties, Tejada-Herrera has opened an area of inquiry and action almost unexplored throughout the history of Peruvian performance: the assertion of the artist’s self/body in its sexual, racial and social otherness or specificity as a vehicle to critically intervene in the public space. Whether in her thorough examination of female desire, in denouncing acts of state violence and criticizing the representation of women in Peruvian media, or even in the later reaffirmation of her condition as an artist-immigrant in the United States; in Tejada-Herrera’s work the body always emerges as a territory of agency and political contestation.

Operating outside the structures of the art system and with a subversive sense of humor, the performative practice of the artist de-naturalizes identity categories -such as gender, ethnicity, nationality- that normalize our bodies, inviting us to imagine ways of living that contravene the rules of good taste and normative lifestyles. Without doubt, Tejada-Herrera’s work takes distance from the modernist formalism and its quality criteria, to join a feminist tradition that seeks to visualize social concerns and aesthetic sensibilities previously excluded from the field of art.

Elena Tejada-Herrera. Videos From This Woman: Performance Documentation 1997-2010 will be open from 11 August until 1 October. The exhibition will be accompanied by the first critical publication on the artist with texts by Armando Andrade Tudela, Miguel A. López and Florencia Portocarreo. In addition, the exhibition will have a public program, engaging with issues present in the work.

about the artist

Elena Tejada-Herrera lives and works in Miami, USA. She has received scholarships by both The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Virginia Commonwealth University, obtaining two Masters in interdisciplinary media, new media and painting. Her work has been exhibited around the world and has earned her numerous awards, such as: the James Nelson Raymond Prize (USA, 2013), the Grand Prix at the XIII Festival of Film and Video Parnu (Estonia, 2007), Pasaporte Para Un Artista (Peru, 1999), among many others.

about Proyecto AMIL

Located in Lima, Proyecto AMIL is a contemporary art platform that aims to act as a bridge between local and international art scenes. Founded in 2010 by Juan Carlos Verme and Joel Yoss, the space showcases large-scale exhibitions in its main gallery, artist interventions in the shopfronts of the disused building it inhabits, an ongoing series of public events and is the centre of a new residency programme.
Proyecto AMIL also publishes artist’s books and monographs.

Proyecto AMIL is a fluid structure that currently spans across the underground level of Centro Comercial Camino Real, in the San Isidro district of Lima. Its founding mission is to enable both internationally renowned and emerging artists to find a way to materialise projects, creating a space in which the public can encounter and engage with a distinct critical content.  All exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.

Images

1. Señorita de buena presencia buscando empleo (1997) 6min 44 sec

2. Bomba y la bataclana en la danza del vientre (1999) 9min 58sec

3. Bomba y la bataclana en la danza del vientre (1999) 9min 58sec

4. Yo-Yo Woman, con traje amortiguador antigolpes (2000) 4min 21sec

5. Paper Animals (2001-2006) 8min 48sec