Water State, projections in the courtyard by Alejandra Abad
September 14 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Join Venezuelan artist Alejandra Abad for an engaging talk about her past projects, process, and recent work where she explores belonging and mutual compassion as key parts of collective wellness. Abad’s current project, Water State, relates to sharing stories of refuge in Florida. Through outdoor digital projections Abad will bring the Everglades and our natural world into urban spaces.
About Alejandra Abad:
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Alejandra Abad is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator who explores belonging and mutual compassion as key parts of collective wellness. Through layering, abstraction, and light, she creates new landscapes that relate to place, family, and community. Her playful storytelling often features fragmentation, folklore, and mythology. Her style is informed by architectural studies at Florida Atlantic University, Film/Video/New Media/Animation at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Interdisciplinary Media Art Practices at The University of Colorado. She uses analog and digital processes for the projection of moving images in public spaces which are rooted in her pedagogy of care. These processes often transform drawings, paintings, collages, prints, and handmade materials into audiovisual elements, animated shorts, visual essays, and site-specific installations that center around community, collaboration, and shared oral histories.
This has led to a series of works centered on environmental futures and the implications of the anthropocene. Her installation work creates environments that include sculptural elements and video projection that relate the history of anticolonial movements to international surrealism and magical realism – particularly from South America and the Caribbean – and how these elements are interconnected in new spaces. Her work features conceptual and collaborative pieces that work to break down the barriers between artist and audience.
