Light Work’s Urban Video Project (UVP) is pleased to present the exhibition “Unseen/forgotten: An ode to the humble landscape | Invisible/olvidado: Oda al paisaje humilde” from July 18-Sept. 28 at its architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade.
In conjunction with the exhibition, artist Paulina Velázquez Solís will be present for a live performance on the Everson Plaza on July 26 at 8:30 p.m.
“Unseen/forgotten: An ode to the humble landscape” is the continuation of a project Velázquez Solís developed during the pandemic. She found herself in a new environment in Brooktondale, New York, surrounded by a creek where the change of pace and isolation brought via COVID accentuated the sound perception of the river, and its presence as a neighbor and living entity.
This sonic connection was similar to her home in Costa Rica, which is also next to a river, making the sound and the experience of the river both grounding and nostalgic. This project, which includes interactive and performance-based elements, explores Central New York as a site of “post-industrial natural wonder,” using regionally extinct species in local herbaria as tools to meditate on “the tension between what prevails and what has shifted or disappeared” in a field of “memory, transformation and territory.”
Paulina Velázquez Solís, “Unseen/forgotten” installation view, 2024 (Photo courtesy of Light Work)
Velázquez Solís (she/her) is a multimedia artist from Latinoamerica with an interest in the oddities hidden within nature and the body. She was born in Puebla, Mexico, and grew up between Mexico and Costa Rica, where she went to art school. She works in diverse mediums, including installation, sculpture, drawing, animation and multimedia performance.
She graduated with a degree in art and visual communication in printmaking at Universidad Nacional in Costa Rica and obtained an M.F.A. in new genres from the San Francisco Art Institute as a Fulbright Scholar. She moved to Ithaca, New York, in 2018 and is currently a faculty member in the art department at Cornell University and Ithaca College.
Her work has been shown around the world, including at the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo and TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica, Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual in México City, Museo de Arte in San Salvador, Torino Contemporanea in Italy, La Casa de las Américas in Havana, Cuba, Mengi in Reykjavik, Iceland, Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., UCLA Biennial in Los Ángeles and the Berkeley Art Museum in the San Francisco Bay Area.
To request high-resolution images for press reproduction and interviews, contact Cali Banks, Light Work communications coordinator, at cali@lightwork.org.
UVP programs are made possible by a Tier Three Project Support grant from the County of Onondaga, with the support of County Executive Ryan McMahon and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts. All Light Work programs are made possible by the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
