Recipient Information
Location
Miami, Florida
Medium
Multidisciplinary
Year of Award
2022
Grant or Fellowship
Southern Prize and State Fellowships
Grant Amount
$5,000
Artist Statement
GeoVanna Gonzalez is a Miami/Berlin-based artist. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California where she received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design. Her work desires to connect private and public space through interventionist, participatory art with an emphasis on collaboration and collectivity. She builds installations that are designed for non-directive play in order to express the potential of our embodied cognition. She references architecture and design by reflecting on how the voids in the spaces we inhabit affect our everyday. Through her work she addresses the shifting notions of gender and identity, intimacy and proximity, and forms of communication and miscommunication in today’s technological and consumer culture. Her most recent work performs these possibilities by collaborating with movement and sound based artists. These improvisations are political acts, analyzing and critiquing what it means to share public space as womxn, queer folks and people of color.
Biography
"GeoVanna Gonzalez was born in Los Angeles, California and lives and works in Miami, Florida. Gonzalez received a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design (2011). Selected solo exhibitions include: “HOW TO: Oh, look at me” (2021), Locust Projects, Miami, Florida; “Where we open every window” (2019), Gr_und, Berlin, Germany; “PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT I” (2019), Bass Museum, Miami, Florida. Selected group exhibitions include: “Common Space” 2021, Oolite Arts, Miami, Florida; “without architecture, there would be no stonewall; without architecture, there would be no brick” (2021), Station Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas; “2020 South Florida Cultural Consortium”(2020), NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Gonzalez received awards and residencies from: A WaveMaker grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation and Locust Projects (2020); The Ellies Visual Arts award from Oolite Arts (2020); The South Florida Cultural Consortium from Miami Dade County (2020). Artist residencies included: Franconia Sculpture Park (2022), Shafer, Minnesota; Santa Fe Art Institute Residency (2022), Santa Fe, New Mexico and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2022), Omaha, Nebraska and work is in collections at Miami-Dade County Art in Public Place (2021), Miami, Florida; and University of Maryland Art Gallery (2019), Museum in College Park, Maryland.
HOW TO: Oh look at me
Year: 2021
Medium: Powder coated steel and expanded metal
Size (h x w x d): 10 x 20 x 15 feet
"HOW TO: OH look at me" is a monochromatic structure consisting of multi-levelseating components accessible via two central staircases, accompanied by a video andfluorescent lighting. The installation is designed to represent the technological gridsystems that shape our modern-day personal relationships and social exchanges. Thestructure facilitates a multiplicity of scenarios that act as a conduit for social connectionand personal encounter. "HOW TO: Oh, look at me" is about reprogramming the binary,heteronormative, monolithic views around race, gender and sexuality, while pushing forcollective discourse around liberation.
HOW TO: Oh look at me
Year: 2021
Medium: Video
“HOW TO: Oh, look at me” is a film that captures a multi-layered, interdisciplinaryperformance conceived as an activation of my sculptural installation of the same name.Through the performance, which features an original musical score, two dancers, andtwo poets, the installation is transformed from a static form to a space that encouragescontemplation, meditation and connection.Through the dancers and poets who interact with and within the structure, I explore howwe navigate the realities of our virtual existence. Both online and offline, we experiencethe world and each other through the screen, justifying our presence through imagesand videos.The presence of the body and the way it intervenes with the structure alludes to thepossibilities of the digital realm, not as cold, detached and isolated, but as a space tochallenge, dissent, innovate, and create: to joyfully immerse ourselves in the in-between.
Moving Interlude
Year: 2021
Medium: Powder-coated aluminum, concrete, acrylic glass
Size (h x w x d): 15 x 6 x 6 feet
“Moving Interlude” is a functional sculpture that challenges the traditional dynamicbetween the built environment and open spaces. I was interested in revealing howurban design and architecture embody cultural values and create spatial injustices. Forthe commission, I recontextualized forms and strategies of hostile architecturetraditionally used by urban designers to control and restrict behavior in the public realm.
Railings, one-way mirrored acrylic, and dividers that are often used to createinequitable and unjust spaces become the foundation for functional sculpture thatencourages and facilitates informal social interactions. Situated at Government Center,this work is intended to be used by city workers, commuters, civilians, houselessindividuals, and other denizens of downtown Miami as a space to rest, convene andcommune.
“Moving Interlude” was commissioned by Fringe Projects, Miami FL.
When We Open Every Window
Year: 2019
Medium: Drywall, wood, and acrylic paint
Size (h x w x d): 10 x 10 x 20 feet
“When we open every window” explores structures and the mechanisms of the mindthrough the use of grids and lines. The installation displays a colorful representation ofmy great grandmother’s house in Inglewood, Los Angeles, through an open cube. Iinvited the audience to step inside the installation and make themselves comfortable inthis home. The installation is personal and nostalgic, conjuring shared momentsbetween friends and strangers. Visitors could look through the windows and sit on thegray stoop, which is covered in the visible footprints of the dancing visitors at the blockparty-style opening. The space is transformed into a place of familiarity andsentimentality, all the while commenting on how our memories are shaped and howthey would look if they were physical and tangible.
When We Open Every Window
Year: 2019
Medium: Drywall, wood, and acrylic paint
Size (h x w x d): 10 x 10 x 20 feet
Opposite view of the installation, where visitors can walk through and sit inside.
When We Open Every Window: Part II
Year: 2020
Medium: video
I remade the installation “When we open every window” into a deconstructed version ofitself. Each component can be moved, rotated and reconfigured into differentarrangements. These configurations were presented as a performance featuring sixartists. These artists interacted with the work and each other while I recited a poemabout intimacy, home and togetherness.Creating an atmosphere of contemplation after months of quarantine, “when we openevery window: part II” prompted questions such as: How do we think about space? Howdo we think about community? How do we think about memory?
PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT I
Year: 2019
Medium: Powder coated steel and acrylic glass
Size (h x w x d): 26 x 60 x 26 inches each (10 modulars)
“PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT I”, explores a contemporary queer interpretation of the tête-à-tête, a classic French design, which translates to "head to head". This interpretation is amodernist take on the tête-à-tête, once used as a place of hiding, to be undercover, forqueer folks and lovers to meet in public and have discrete and secret conversations.In my modular reincarnation, the structures’ endless orientations aims to honor theintersectional realities of our identities. The structure acts as an intimate meeting pointwith its completely open design acting as a declaration, a place to not feel shame orneed to justify one's self. This installation was commissioned and exhibited at the BassMuseum in Miami Beach.
PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT IV
Year: 2020
Medium: Powder coated steel and acrylic glass
Size (h x w x d): 26 x 60 x 26 inches each (10 modulars)
“PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT IV”, was presented at the end of 2020 at NSU Art Museum forthe The South Florida Cultural Consortium. This was during the height of the pandemic,when doing live performances was still not possible, and when going out to clubs wasalso out of the question. I wanted to make an installation that paid tribute to theimportances of queer club spaces. I stacked the modulars to mimic a speaker stationthat one might find in a club, and commissioned producer / DJ Yesenia Rojas to makea custom mix that played on a loop inside the stacked modulars. Directly across fromthe stack were two more modulars composed as a tête-à-tête, so that visitors could beactive participants in the installation while listening to the music.
Lost Underground
Year: 2021
Medium: Video
Taking the form of an experimental dance film, “Lost underground” explores the role ofunderground spaces, specifically queer clubs. Motivated by acts of communal care,they function as expressions and embodiments of desire, fostering intimate connectionswith people, through music and movement. This film reflects on the importance of thesespaces, as conduits to freedom, preservation, and liberation, both prior to and duringthe pandemic. “Lost underground” examines how a lack of access to these particularspaces has affected people during this past year and a half, limiting the possibilities forrelease and self-expression.“Lost underground” is also accompanied with a larger structure where visitors can walkthrough and experience the film.
Lost Underground
Year: 2021
Medium: video installation with structure
Size (h x w x d): 7' 6" x 6' 7" x 6'
This photo show an installation shot of the video with the accompanied structure.