Pablo Helguera Exhibition Opens October 15 at Shirley Fiterman Art Center

The Shirley Fiterman Art Center (SFAC) at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) will present A Journal of the Year of the Pharmacy, a large-scale exhibition of the work of Pablo Helguera accompanied by a series of performances at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center.

The exhibition at SFAC will be on view from October 15, 2021 through January 22, 2022 and accompanied with a series of free performances on October 15, 22 and 29 at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center (BMCC TPAC).

“Drawn from autobiographical materials and diaries, the project investigates aspects of the self as a portal to larger issues to which we are all connected, including our past personal histories, shared cultural contexts, education, work and social interactions,” said Lisa Panzera, director of the SFAC. “Helguera’s work has often engaged in diaristic practice — the highly intimate and vulnerable communication that tries to make sense of a particular moment in both personal and collective ways.”

The project, which references Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, was developed over the course of the COVID pandemic. Defoe’s work, published in 1722, is a fictional narrative of the bubonic plague, also known as “The Plague” and estimated to have caused the death of a third of the population of Europe. Defoe’s vivid description of a social and health crisis resonates with contemporary experience of the current pandemic.

In the words of artist Pablo Helguera, “What this highly introspective moment appears to be generating, and what it might result in, is in the construction of a new localism as both a form of building resilience … We have no choice but to rethink locality, to engage with our immediate domestic lives, with our own microhistories, with the world that is only a walking distance from where we are confined, and have them as a point of departure. It is a new world very distant from the globetrotting days of 2019.”

The exhibition’s four installations reflect cultural identity, the role of geography in personal life and more

A Journal of the Year of the Pharmacy is divided into four installations and each includes audio of the artist’s reflections from March of 2020 to the present.

These audio components will be presented as a live performance fon October 15, 22 and 29 at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. To attend the free performances, guests must book tickets in advance through Eventbrite.

“The exhibition reflects on topics such as the role that geography plays in our personal lives, our desire for escapism, the complexities of cultural identity, walking as a process of learning, and the psychology of those who play a supporting role in the arts,” says SFAC Director Panzera.

The installations present period re-creations, museum display strategies, video and works on paper and canvas.

These include Colonia Nápoles, which refers to the neighborhood where the artist grew up in Mexico City; Chamber Music, which reflects the relationship between 19^th-century classical music and contemporary art; Evanston, which relates to the artist’s school years in Chicago, and The Art Technician’s Syndrome, which conveys the artist’s reflections as a museum educator for three decades.

Pable Helguera, a New-York based artist born in Mexico City, creates work in many formats

Pablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) is a New York-based artist whose work focuses on topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd. The work includes lectures, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction.

His project The School of Panamerican Unrest — a nomadic think-tank that crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego — made 40 stops and covered almost 20,000 miles and is considered a pioneering work of socially engaged public art.

From 1991 to 2020, Helguera worked as an educator and director of programming at both the Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He is currently Assistant Professor of Arts and Entrepreneurship at the College of Performing Arts at The New School.

Helguera has exhibited or performed at venues including the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; ICA Boston; RCA London; 8th Havana Biennal, PERFORMA 05, Havana; Shedhalle, Zurich; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Brooklyn Museum; IFA Galerie, Bonn; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo; MALBA , Buenos Aires, Ex-Teresa Espacio Alternativo, Mexico City; The Bronx Museum; Artist Space, New York; and the Sculpture Center, New York.

He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship as well as grants from Creative Capital, Franklin Furnace and Art Matters.

Helguera is represented by Kent Fine Art in New York and Enrique Guerro Gallery in Mexico City. He is also the author of books including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011) and The Parable Conference (2014), and he writes a weekly online column, Beautiful Eccentrics.

SFAC visitors may view the exhibition by appointment, with COVID requirements in place

All visitors to the SFAC at 81 Barclay Street, New York, NY 10017, must make an appointment in advance and comply with all COVID-19 requirements.

Visitors without a CUNY ID are required to upload their vaccination status to Cleared 4, via a link which will be emailed to them, once they submit a request to visit the exhibition.

All vaccination information must be uploaded at least 72 hours before the gallery visit and proof of confirmation must be presented at the door.

Visitors must also wear a mask and socially distance the entire time they are on the BMCC campus — regardless of vaccination status.

To attend the free performances at BMCC TPAC, guests must book tickets in advance via Eventbrite and comply with all of the COVID-19 requirements listed above.

To make an appointmen to view the exhibition, please email shirleyfitermanartcenter@bmcc.cuny.edu

 

 

About the Shirley Fiterman Art Center

The Shirley Fiterman Art Center of Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, is dedicated to organizing exhibitions of contemporary art and cultural programming through which it seeks to promote and enrich the educational mission of BMCC and serve as a resource for the college and Lower Manhattan communities. The Fiterman Art Center believes strongly in the role of education and advocacy through art and in the preservation of the artistic and historic legacies of Tribeca and Lower Manhattan.