Buffalo, NY – Recently the Albright-Knox announced a new exhibition, Comunidades Visibles: The Materiality of Migration, at Albright-Knox Northland. The exhibition will open Friday, February 12, 2021, and will remain on view through Sunday, May 16, 2021.

Comunidades Visibles (Visible Communities): The Materiality of Migration brings together artworks by six first- or second-generation immigrant Latinx artists. In their creative practices, these artists celebrate their communities and interrogate the materials and stories that form their foundations. Each combines materials and techniques from their country of origin, from other colonized places, or from their present context with everyday or art-historical references. The resulting hybrid practices correspond with the artists’ hybrid identities.

Collectively, these objects and installations invite us to question our relationships to our own histories, the communities to which we belong, and to see with new appreciation the value that erased or marginalized groups contribute to our daily lives. By turning personal history into palpable presence, the selected artists transform difficult narratives into celebratory and beautiful objects that convey urgent and consequential narratives about historical and contemporary immigration.  

About the Artists

Carolina Aranibar-Fernández is a Bolivia-born artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. She creates performances and site-specific installations that respond to the situation at the border between Mexico and the United States, as well as interrogate the history of material and human displacement around the world.

Esperanza Cortés was born in Colombia and lives in New York City. Using beads, gold, and embroidery, she explores her family history and the role of women in Latin America and Europe.

Patrick Martinez is a Los Angeles-based artist who honors his surroundings through the lens of his background as an American of Mexican and Filipino descent. In his multimedia practice, he often incorporates everyday materials such as neon signs into sculptural paintings.

Raúl de Nieves, a New York City–based artist born in Mexico, produces faux stained-glass windows using mundane materials such as cellophane and tape, then populates his colorful and luminous spaces with elaborate human-scaled “costumes” made out of densely layered beads.

Ecuador-born, New York City­–based artist Ronny Quevedo explores the layered histories of his heritage, his parents’ lives, and the collective experience of sports in his large-scale installation practice as well as his wall-based drawing and collage works.

Brazil-born, Buffalo-based artist Felipe Shibuya’s collaborative and research-driven practice transforms raw data into a powerful formal message highlighting the history of immigration into the United States.  

This exhibition is organized by Curatorial Assistant Andrea Alvarez. Admission to Albright-Knox Northland is always Pay What You Wish.

Albright-Knox Northland is supported by M&T Bank.

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