It’s been four decades since a University of California, Davis faculty member has been invited to join the prestigious Venice Biennale, an arts and culture showcase sometimes considered the art world’s version of the Olympics.
Works by art professor Beatriz Cortez will be there, carrying on the school’s significant legacy of previous honorees.
With her selection into the show, Cortez, a multidisciplinary artist and sculptor, follows in the footsteps of UCD art professors William T. Wiley (1972 and 1980) and Roy De Forest (1980), to exhibit at the world-renowned exhibition, which casts an eye on themes of politics and contemporary cultural and social issues through performance, sculpture and installations.
This year, the 60th exhibition, April 20 to Nov. 24, features an expanded focus on marginalized identities.
Cortez’s work explores qualities of being occurring at the same time, or simultaneity; life in relationship with time, or temporalities; and “imaginaries” of the future, particularly as they relate to memory and loss in the aftermath of war and the experience of immigration.
Her recent solo exhibition at Storm King Art Center in New York, “Beatriz Cortez: The Volcano that Left,” featured an imagined reconstruction of an ancient volcano made of hammered and welded steel. She has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2023 Latinx Artist Fellowship from the U.S. Latinx Art Forum.
“I am so thrilled and honored to be the first artist from El Salvador to be included in the international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale, and to be one of few Latinx artists based in the United States who have been invited,” Cortez said in a press statement issued by the university. “It is a beautiful manifestation of the communities and individuals whose voices and labor mark my work, and who have supported and inspired me in multiple ways throughout the years.”
A native of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, Cortez joined the UCD faculty as associate professor in the fall of 2023 following a visiting professorship in The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies.
Visiting artists in the Studio engage with students at the undergraduate and graduate levels through seminars, critiques and public lectures in residencies focused on teaching. The program was founded by the Department of Art and Art History in 2021 and is underwritten by art philanthropists Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem. Before her residency, Cortez gave a talk as part of the Art Studio Visiting Artist Lecture Series in April 2020.
In fall 2024, the university community and Sacramento region will have a chance to experience Cortez’s sculpture in a four-person exhibition at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art along with that of fellow artists Kang Seung Lee, Candice Lin and Phillip Byrne (MFA, 2022). Lee will also participate in the Biennale and give a public Visiting Artist Lecture, organized by the Department of Art and Art History, on March 7.
“This tremendous achievement is a testament to the level of talent Beatriz brings to UC Davis,” Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science, said in the prepared statement. “Beatriz is already playing a powerful role in increasing our collaborations across our arts programs and departments and helping to elevate our arts community as a whole in national and international recognition.”
Joining Cortez and Lee at the exhibition will be multimedia artist Jeffrey Gibson, who, working out of his Hudson River Valley studio in New York, blends American Indian, queer, and American histories and perspective alongside themes of pop culture to explore issues of identity. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, he is one of the first Indigenous artists to represent the United States at the Biennale. Additionally, the show’s co-curator, Kathleen Ash-Milby, from the Portland Art Museum, is a member of the Navajo Nation.
The 60th Biennale is titled “Stranieri Ovunque,” or “Foreigners Everywhere,” its title drawn from a series of neon sculptures by the Paris-born, Palermo-based Claire Fontaine collective that shows, in a growing number of languages the words, “Foreigners Everywhere.” The phrase itself comes from the name of a Turin collective that fought racism and xenophobia in the early 2000s in Italy.
Biennale artists — and this year there are more than 330 — are selected by the Board of la Biennale de Venezia, following the proposal by the curator, who this year is Adriano Pedrosa. With the curator’s recommendation, the Biennale names the five members of its international jury, which is charged with awarding prizes to the national pavilions. The 2024 exhibit will take place in the Central Pavilion (Giardini) and in the Arsenale.
The first International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, which has a 129-year history, attracted some 200,000 visitors. It was later named the Biennale because it occurs every two years. In 2022, some 800,000 people visited the exhibition.