Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos

On January 29, Art at Americas Society opens Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos, the inaugural exhibition in a series where two artists who are friends and collaborators are invited to jointly explore how they influence each other’s work. Open through May 17, the show highlights the ongoing conversations and collaborations between the Los Angeles-based artists Beatriz Cortez (b.1970, San Salvador) and rafa esparza (b.1981, Pasadena).

Cortez and esparza have over the years engaged in conversations about ancient and contemporary ideas of the Earth, the cosmos, the underworld, and the knowledge developed by ancient Indigenous people. These discussions inform their practices and have also led to numerous co-created projects such as Nomad 13, Xolotl’s Time Travels, Solar Star, Puente, and Portal Sur, after Copán. Expanding on these dialogues, Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos presents works selected by the artists that speak to the movement of this ancient knowledge through the flow of all beings and matter across the cosmos.

The exhibition centers around the idea of ancient objects traveling across space and time. esparza’s Hyperspace: -100km + ∞, 2025 is a monument to honor the Olmec, appearing distorted as if on the edge of a wormhole. The work is made from the artist’s family adobe recipe mixed with basalt, the volcanic stone that original Olmec heads were carved out of. In Hyperspace: -100km + ∞, rafa charts the journey molten magma can travel, from the depths of the Earth’s crust to when it erupts onto the surface, and the infinite journeys and forms the basalt can take as a stone.

Alongside esparza’s work will be two steel sculptures produced by Cortez, Cabeza de Jaguar (Monumento #47), 2022, and Gift of the Artist to the Ancient Object Labeled as Human Head Emerging from Monster Jaws, One Migrant to Another, in Memory of your True Name and your Land, 2023, which evoke looted ancient objects and examine how people and matter travel across land. The exhibition will also include Altar de Kaqjay, 2021, a collaborative work made by Cortez, the Maya Kaqchikel collective Kaqjay, and Fiebre Ediciones. This steel work evokes an altar that has not been moved from the ceremonial center where it was located in ancient times, Kaqjay. In this gesture, the artists leave the original ancient carved stone in its original siting and bring to the diaspora the steel altar that evokes its powers and ancient use. The works in the exhibition will be placed atop an adobe brick installation by esparza, which will be placed across the entire space of the gallery to allow the works to meet the Earth and the soil from where they are removed.

To accompany the show, Americas Society will offer a series of free public programs, and a catalogue that features a conversation between the artists.

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