Artist Name: Luisa Valderrama
Residency Dates: February-April 2019
Born: 1989
Lives & Works: Brooklyn, NY
Artist URL: http://www.luisa-valderrama.com/
Education: Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture, with Distinction Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia; Bachelor of Arts in Art History University of Los Andes
Bio / Statement:
Luisa Valderrama’s work draws on her experience of living between rural and urban environments in Colombia, where she grew up. She explores organic materiality, formalist composition, self-reflection and how things relate to the land through a combination of mixed media sculpture, installation, painting, and video. She hopes to evoke the appreciation for the natural environment, as well as the peacefulness, the rudimentary and primal awareness which the land exudes, in relation to the industrially coordinated and choreographed mental and physical spaces of the city. The encounter between intuitive instinctual flow and artificially imposed, yet necessary constraint reflects the two realities she belongs to, seeking to reclaim identity in the confrontation and cohabitation of different values.
Luisa Valderrama is a recipient of NYFA 2019 Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists (NYC). In 2015 she partook in the itinerant residencies of 4-18 (COL) a nonprofit community-based art organization. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Colombia and New York and collaborates with 4-18 in Colombia. Solo exhibitions: Hato [’a.to] in Steuben Gallery at Pratt Institute, 2018. Selected projects and group exhibitions include: Boiling Point at The Boiler Pierogi in 2018 curated by Regine Basha. Half a Wave at the Pfizer Building in Brooklyn curated by Christine Rebhuhn, 2018. The Latin American Contemporary Fine Art Competition, at Agora Gallery, 2018. Ecosophy Now, at the Pfizer Building in Brooklyn, 2017. Espectativas Sobre la Vision at El Garaje Gallery, Bogota, Colombia, 2016. Entramado at Espacio Alterno Gallery curated by Lorenzo Freydell Vanstaseghem, Bogota, Colombia, 2016. And La Feria del Millón Art Fair in Bogota, Colombia, 2015.
Support: Dirt & Debt, RU’s first thematic residency program is made possible with support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
