The Earth and its Inhabitants
The Earth and its Inhabitants
New Media and Installation Exhibition with Adriana Barrios, Cristina Molina, and Jonathan Traviesa
On View
February 3 - March 24, 2023
Exhibition Details
The Earth and its Inhabitants
New Media and Installation Exhibition with Adriana Barrios, Cristina Molina, and Jonathan Traviesa
February 3 - March 24, 2023
Press
Cultivate is pleased to present an exhibition of works by artists Adriana Barrios, Cristina Molina, and Jonathan Traviesa.
Cultivate is proud to present, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, an exhibition featuring artists Adriana Barrios, Cristina Molina, and Jonathan Traviesa. This exhibition will present new media and installation work. It will run from February 3rd through March 24th, 2023 with an opening reception on February 3rd from 4pm - 9pm. This exhibition coincides with the Grand Opening of the Cultivate gallery, and also the one-year anniversary of its being an arts organization.
The Earth and Its Inhabitants features Adriana Barrios's projected installation from her work, Synchronous Gaze. Synchronous Gaze took place at Merill Springs Park on frozen Lake Mendota on February 9, 2021 in 9 °F. The artwork is made up of a video projection broadcasting a live feed video made viewable by the ISS HD Earth Viewing Experiment from approximately 220 miles above the Earth. The camera pointed down onto the Earth, surveys our planet making visible an extraordinary picture. The live stream video allows the viewer to look back at themselves through the streaming video onto the projection screen. The projector screen acts as a mirror allowing the viewer to look back at themselves and the earth by way of the camera’s gaze. We are both the observer and spectacle as our eyes watch one another's world pass by. This experience demands us to be an active participant in the artwork requiring us to consider our place in the world at that very moment.
In Florida Natives and Citrus Limbo, artists Cristina Molina and Jonathan Traviesa reference the Flora of their home state to speak to the myth-building and aspiration surrounding Floridian narratives. Citrus Limbo depicts the two artists floating nude in a dark, tempestuous sea, atop two inflatable oranges slices. Once the most lucrative agricultural industry, Florida Orange growth now faces dwindling numbers due to shifts in weather and invasive pests. In Florida Natives, Molina and Traviesa encased plants endemic to Florida in vacuum-sealed bags, rendering a contemporary archive of asphyxiated botanical specimens. These two works comment on the shifting physical and cultural landscape of Florida, its dependency on petrochemical products, and the impacts they have on its human and non-human residents.
Beyond Cultivate's exhibition, the artist's works has been exhibited in the New Orleans Museum of Art, Cleveland Institute of Art, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Studio 84 in Florence, Italy, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Polk Museum, New Orleans Film Festival, and Syros International Film Festival among others.
Installation Views
Opening Reception Photos
Photos courtesy of Bud Kibby and TinyUproar Photography.
About the Artists
Adriana Barrios is a queer, biracial, Latina artist who grew up on the coastal borderlands of San Diego, California. Barrios received her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is a Master of Fine Arts graduate from The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Barrios has exhibited her artwork internationally in Italy and Mexico and nationally in New York, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Texas. Barrios has received awards for her artwork including the 2020 Women Artist Forward Fund Art Prize and the Nō Studios Artist Grant. Barrios has participated in artist residencies at the Pilchuck Glass School, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and at Santa Reparata International school of Art. Barrios currently holds the position of Engagement Manager for Exhibitions and Programs at the Center for Design and Material Culture in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Photo by Jonathan Traviesa
Cristina Molina is a visual artist who hails from the subtropics of Miami and currently lives and works in New Orleans—two environmentally precarious sites that have influenced her research on identity, loss, and disappearing landscapes. Spanning performance, video installation, photography, and textile design, Molina’s artwork is set amongst vulnerable terrains both real and imagined. Using the language of magical realism, her works reshape and centralize little-known narratives to upend dominant histories. Molina’s projects are typically collaborative and often include the participation of The Crystal Efemmes—a collective that produces immersive installations and performances with feminist agendas and mythical proposals. From 2014-20 Molina was a member of the New Orleans artist-run project, The Front where she curated artwork and co-organized The Front’s annual film festival. Cristina Molina is an Associate Professor and Gallery Director at Southeastern Louisiana University where she received the 2018 President’s Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity and was the recipient of the Viola Brown Endowed Professorship in Visual and Dramatic Arts from 2020-22.
Recent accolades include a fellowship at the Artist in Residence in Everglades program (2019), the Joan Mitchell Center (2021), and project support from the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2020 Molina was one of 61 artists selected for the national exhibition State of the Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Previously, her work has been featured at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Polk Museum, New Orleans Film Festival, and Syros International Film Festival among others.
Jonathan Traviesa is a photographer and artist living in New Orleans since the late 1990s, and has been teaching photography at Tulane University for the last five years. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in New Orleans, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and Tokyo. Traviesa is a founding member of The Front gallery and released his first book, “Portraits” with a concurrent exhibition at The Front during October and November of 2009. As part of Photonola, Traviesa received the New Orleans Photo Alliance’s inaugural Michael P. Smith Grant Award, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art exhibited a selection of his portraits from the book. His work is collected publicly at the Ogden and at The New Orleans museum of Art and privately at the Jimmy Club, The Saratoga Collection, and The Paramount Building.