New
Museum
Thursday 09/03/20 7PM
Conversations

Conversation with Carmen Argote and Margot Norton on Last Light

Cover Image:

Still from Carmen Argote’s Last Light, 2020. Courtesy of Clockshop and the artist. [ALT TEXT: In this still image, the artist’s index finger and thumb, covered in a translucent glove, frame a yellow and red ambulance that is driving away at a Los Angeles intersection.]

Please register for this online program here.

Join us for a discussion with artist Carmen Argote and curator Margot Norton. New Museum and Clockshop are pleased to host this live conversation via Zoom. To preserve the detail and filmmaking choices, we are kindly asking all attendees to view the high quality film ahead of time on Vimeo. To view this project, please copy this link into your web browser: https://vimeo.com/435171192. The film is approximately 12 minutes long and has both English and Spanish closed captions. The film will be on view until Wednesday, September 9th.

Please note the film will not be screened via Zoom during the live conversation, though some still frames from the film will be presented. The program will begin with a discussion of Last Light, Argote’s first film, which was recorded in Los Angeles during the pandemic’s first wave. Last Light focuses on the artist’s daily ritual of walking throughout the city as a meditative and reflective act, one that has remained integral to her artmaking practice. Combining still and moving images of Argote walking through Los Angeles during lockdown with an intimate voiceover, she reflects on feelings of vulnerability, mortality, violence, and memories of a city in constant transformation.

The zoom conversation between Argote and Norton will begin promptly at 7PM, and will discuss Last Light in relationship to Argote’s broader artistic practice, her recent solo exhibition at the New Museum, “As Above, So Below,” and new bodies of work related to the film. Argote is currently showing a new series of drawings made in conjunction with Last Light, titled Glove Hand Dog, across three spaces in Los Angeles: Clockshop, Commonwealth and Council, and Stairwell Gallery. She has also produced a print edition for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), titled BLOAT (2020), which explores notions of time, repetition, and language alongside food as a tool for mark-making.

This program is co-presented with Clockshop.

Los Angeles–based artist Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico) traces, layers, and transforms diverse materials sourced from her surroundings. At the heart of her interdisciplinary practice is a continuous conversation between her own physical form and the location in which she is working—often responding to the various cultural, economic, personal, and historical narratives within a particular site. Informed by this dialogue, many of her works bare vestiges of her body’s interactions with its environment. Working with materials seeped in symbolic significance—such as coffee, pine needles, avocado, and cochineal dye—Argote’s work sheds light on the constantly shifting surface of urban landscapes and her own experience as a Mexican immigrant in the United States.

Argote received her BA and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Visual Arts Center, University of North Texas, Austin (2020); New Museum, New York (2019); PAOS, Guadalajara, Mexico (2019); Ballon Rouge Collective, Istanbul Turkey (2019), and New York (2018). Her work as been included in group exhibitions at SculptureCenter, New York (2019); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2017); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017); National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago (2015); and MAK Center, Los Angeles (2015). She is a recipient of the Artadia Award, Los Angeles (2019); The Nancy Graves Foundation Artist Grant (2018); the Rema Hort Mann Foundation YoYoYo Grant (2015); and the California Community Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2013).

Sponsors

New Museum Digital Initiatives are generously supported by Hermine and David B. Heller.

Generous ongoing support is provided by the Charlotte and Bill Ford Artist Talks Fund.

Support for Education and Public Engagement programs is provided, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund; and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.

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