15/01/2017
Lily Cox-Richard: If Not An Hongo
Yvonne invites you to celebrate the conclusion of Lily Cox-Richard's residency and the inauguration of her site-specific installation If Not An Hongo, with a casual gathering from 5-7 pm, Tuesday, January 17.
Cox-Richard's recent work has looked to the ways in which histories of labor and value are embedded in landscape and the built environment. At Yvonne, she has pursued an investigation of a specific biological occurrence native to Guatemala: this abnormal growth, which appears on trees in response to invasive species, is often misidentified as a mushroom. In a series of new sculptures and prints, Cox-Richard grounds the plant form in the architecture of Yvonne. Her concrete sculptures bring to life the distinctive floor tiles of the space, pairing them with the strange mushroom-like objects. How do the materials of architecture relate to larger cultural expressions of space and growth, she asks. What does a native growth look like, and what drives the consistent misidentification of it? Mushrooms have been widely studied for their medicinal and curative properties, as well as for their community growth patterns. If these objects are not mushrooms, then how do we re-think what they do? And, metaphorically, if we are working without the healing properties of mushrooms, but with the mysterious symbiotic tree growth, what are the potentialities that proposes instead? Opening the week of the U.S. inauguration, the question is as much environmental as political. How do we grow and survive in this new world that is being built around us? How can acts of necessary resistance turn into something beautiful?
Located in downtown Guatemala City, Yvonne is an exercise in living-with. She is a place for conversation, for experimentation, and for exploring convivencia. Yvonne is an expat, and she is pensive about what that can mean. She lives with objects, and she invites artists, designers and writers to share her space. Yvonne believes that sincere and simple hospitality can be a radical site for creative work.
This residency and exhibition were made in conversation with a community of artists, writers, curators, and friends. Yvonne sends especial thanks and abrazos to Hellen Ascoli, James Sullivan, Esvin Alarcón Lam, Sergio Valencia Salazar, Jorge De Leon, Manuel Chavajay Moralez, Margarita Figueroa, Mario Santizo, Dario Escobar, Andy Campbell, Rodrigo Arenas-Carter, Jose Lopez, Alba Marina Escalón, and Mari Martínez.
Yvonne
www.yvonne.soy
Located in downtown Guatemala City, Yvonne is an exercise in living-with. She is a place for conversation, for experimentation, and for exploring convivencia. Yvonne is an expat, and she is pensive about what that can mean. She lives with objects, and she invites artists, designers and writers to sh...