David Antonio Cruz is one of the participants in ‘Portraiture Now: Stage the Self’ in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington.
Opens August 22 till April 12 2015.
Being careful of the company you keep, 2016.
Portraiture Now: Stage the Self
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will open a new exhibition featuring six contemporary Latino artists who explore how identities are constructed and negotiated through portraiture. “Portraiture Now: Staging the Self,” open Aug. 22 through April 12, 2015, will include 59 photographs, paintings and mixed media portraits. A press tour will be held Sept. 10, 10 to 11:30 a.m.
everythingandthepastrychef, 2012.
“This series of exhibitions showcases contemporary artists who are breaking the conventions of portraiture,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “In ‘Staging the Self,’ these artists show complex contemporary identities unfolding between themselves and their subjects. They are both within and between American and Latino cultures.”
“Portraiture Now: Staging the Self” features the work of David Antonio Cruz, Carlee Fernandez, María Martínez-Cañas, Rachelle Mozman, Karen Miranda Rivadeneira and Michael Vasquez. Theatricality is central to their inquiry, as they represent narratives remembered or imagined from their own family histories, or superimpose portraits of their loved ones over themselves, looking for what is shared or unique in individuality. Some of the artists reference their Latino heritage in their work, and some do not. As they present themselves in a staged manner, portraiture loses its aura of certainty and becomes an evolving map for finding oneself and others.
Candyboyit’sonlycastleburning, 2010.
This exhibition team is led by Taína Caragol, curator of Latino art and history and includes Brandon Fortune, chief curator; Rebecca Kasemeyer, associate director of education; Dorothy Moss, associate curator of painting and sculpture; and David C. Ward, senior historian. “Portraiture Now: Staging the Self” is presented by the National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with the Smithsonian Latino Center.
The National Portrait Gallery is committed to expanding visitors’ ideas of portraiture through its programs, including the ongoing series of “Portraiture Now” exhibitions, which explore contemporary artists working to explore figuration in new ways.
TakeABite…, 2011 (video still), work in progress.
National Portrait Gallery
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery tells the history of America through the individuals who have shaped its culture. Through the visual arts, performing arts and new media, the Portrait Gallery portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives tell the American story.
silent hum, 2007, performance.
Cruz’s work draws from 1950’s Americana, classic films and fashion, as well as historical events to present a psychologically-charged, shifting, and unnamed space. Informed by queer, diasporic Latino experience, his work reinterprets narratives and invisible histories of migrating people in search of home. His work questions and negotiates what’s being offered while partially obscuring the familiar.
causeit’sjustalil’bitoffrostingsam | cream, 2011.
A recent live stage version of a video within a video titled ‘Takeabite’ includes a chorus, orchestra, and a large cast of actors. Desire and repulsion are echoed in the video through the image of a defiled cake, with references to 1950’s domesticity and gender expectations set against a tropical landscape inhabited by forbidding and alluring sexualized figures. The temptation of integration and the opposing fear of lost identity are amplified by a soundtrack from Snow White enticing her to “take a bite”. Cruz’s work does not attempt to reconcile the forces of control and abandon, but to maintain a balance of the familiar and the unknown.
getyourman,lovers,witches,mothers,thetrees…., 2007.
David Antonio Cruz received his MFA from Yale University and his BFA from Pratt Institute. He attended Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture and the AIM program at the Bronx Museum. He is a recipient of the 2013 Franklin Furnace Fund and the Urban Artist Initiative Award in 2011. His work has been exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, Bronx Museum, Jersey City Museum, Museode Puerto Rico and various galleries. Most recently at Lehmann Maupin, the Islip Museum of Art, and Performa 13. His films have been shown at the Big Screen Project, the Anthology Film Archives, Arte Americas, El Museum Del Barrio and variousinstallations in Philadelphia, Chapel Hill and Miami. This summer his work will be part of the Portrait Now exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery. The artist works and lives in Brooklyn, NY.