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Artist Alejandro Cartagena to host virtual Artist Talks in English and Spanish with the George Eastman Museum

May 14th, 2020

Rochester, N.Y., May 14, 2020—The George Eastman Museum has recently announced that the formerly postponed artist’s talks with Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977), originally scheduled for March 27 and March 28, have been rescheduled as virtual conversations. A Spanish-language talk will be held on Thursday, May 28 at 1 p.m. and an English-language conversation between the artist and Heather Shannon, Associate Curator at the George Eastman Museum, on Friday, May 29 at 1p.m. Both talks are free, but registration is required as space is limited.

An exhibition of Cartagena’s work, Alejandro Cartagena: Photo Structure / Foto Estructura, had been on view at the George Eastman Museum since January 31, before the museum temporarily closed due to the pandemic. Co-organized by the George Eastman Museum and the Chrysler Museum of Art, the exhibition presents Cartagena’s latest work, including several new pieces. The exhibition and its accompanying audio tour are presented in both English and Spanish. The exhibition has now been adapted as a virtual tour, in both English and Spanish, for guests to experience from home. To view the virtual exhibitions, listen to the audio tour, or to see how Cartagena created these works, visit eastman.org.

 

[Virtual] Artist’s Talk with Alejandro Cartagena (Spanish-language)/ Charla con el artista

Thursday, May 28 at 1 p.m.

Register via Zoom

Artist Alejandro Cartagena will discuss his work in the exhibition Photo Structure / Foto Estructura live online. The talk will be in Spanish and registration is free. We encourage you to browse the exhibition virtually ahead of time. Texts and audio are available in both English and Spanish at eastman.org.

El artista Alejandro Cartagena discutirá en vivo y en línea su trabajo en la exposición Photo Structure / Foto Estructura. La charla será en español. Puede registrarse gratis. Le exhortamos a que explore la exposición en línea antes de la charla. Los textos y el audio están disponibles en inglés y español.

[Virtual] Conversation with Alejandro Cartagena and Heather Shannon (English-language)

 

Friday, May 29 at 1 p.m.

Register via Zoom

Artist Alejandro Cartagena and Associate Curator Heather Shannon will discuss Cartagena's work in his exhibition Photo Structure / Foto Estructura live online. Registration is free. We encourage you to browse the exhibition virtually ahead of time. Texts and audio are available in both English and Spanish at eastman.org.

El artista Alejandro Cartagena y la curadora asociada Heather Shannon discutirán en vivo y en línea el trabajo de Cartagena en su exposición Photo Structure / Foto Estructura. Puede registrarse gratis. Le exhortamos a que explore la exposición en línea antes de la charla. Los textos y el audio están disponibles en inglés y español.

About Photo Structure / Foto Estructura

For this latest body of work, Cartagena spent time sifting through landfills on the outskirts of Mexico City to collect thousands of discarded photographs—portraits, snapshots, and tourist views. Cartagena excises figures, faces, or other details from the found photographs and reconfigures the original compositions by either moving the cut fragments or removing them entirely. The altered photographs remain strangely whole and strikingly familiar, compelling the viewer to consider what gives a photograph meaning. His arrangements reveal that seemingly crucial aspects of an image are both central and incidental to our ability to understand the works.

Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, in northeastern Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. His work has been exhibited internationally and is part of public and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and the George Eastman Museum. Cartagena is also a self-publisher and co-editor of photobooks and has been published internationally in magazines and newspapers such as the New York TimesLe Monde, and the New Yorker. He is the recipient of several awards, including the international Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, and the Premio IILA-FotoGrafia Award in Rome.

 

Support the George Eastman Museum

This is a critical time for museums across the globe. The George Eastman Museum encourages individuals to visit eastman.org/support, if you are able to contribute to the museum’s Annual Fund at this time. Donations of all amounts are appreciated. The unrestricted dollars that membership and annual fund gifts provide are essential to the museum's operations, and the exhibitions and public programs that bring our collections to life for our audiences. And as with all of our community's cultural organizations, these dollars have never been more critical.

 

About the George Eastman Museum

Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the National Historic Landmark estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 28,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program and, through its two joint master’s degree programs with the University of Rochester, makes critical contributions to the fields of film preservation and of photographic preservation and collection management. For more information, visit eastman.org.

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