The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a performing arts center and research and production facility that provides an environment to support the realization of complex artworks and research projects at any stage, from inception to completion. EMPAC will present three special commissions of time-based work by Latinx, Caribbean, and Latin American visual artists. Taking advantage of EMPAC’s expert team of video, audio, and production engineers and technicians, these artists will explore the potential of time-based media to excavate and re-contextualize cultural lineages and reveal ways in which they can shape contemporary society. Puerto Rican artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz will install a moving-image work that imagines a post-patriarchal civilization; emerging Venezuelan artist Ana Navas will reflect on the art history of the current political crisis in her home country; and Latinx artist Clarissa Tossin will advocate for the preservation of indigenous Mayan voices through performances on 3D-printed replicas of pre-Columbian instruments.
Latinx, Caribbean, and Latin American artists support
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Dicen que cabalga sobre un tigre. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Mick Bello
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Dicen que cabalga sobre un tigre. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Sara Griffith
Clarissa Tossin, Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los Volcanos Canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Sara Griffith
Clarissa Tossin, Mojo’q che b’ixan ri ixkanulab’ / Antes de que los Volcanos Canten / Before the Volcanoes Sing. Production still at EMPAC/Rensselaer. Photo: Sara Griffith
Ana Navas, Cuando las nubes eran las olas. Production still, Alexander Calder’s Acoustic Ceiling at Aula Magna, Central University of Venezuela, Caracas. Photo: Ana Navas
Ana Navas, Cuando las nubes eran las olas. Production still at Central University of Venezuela, Caracas. Photo: Ana Navas
“It is an honor to be part of The Warhol Foundation’s mission to support the visual arts coupled with its commitment to specifically support the voices of women, POC, Native Americans, and LGBTQ. It is simply thrilling to be part of an organization where we get to see these values writ large and implement real change in real life ways in the visual arts community that still so needs to move forward in terms of social justice, equality, and diversity. We put our money where our mouth is. How many institutions actually do that?”
Deborah Kass, Artist