In the Studio: Juan Covelli and Santiago Montoya

Colombian artists Juan Covelli and Santiago Montoya will discuss their work and artistic practice with Tie Jojima, Associate Curator of Art at Americas Society, and co-curator of our current exhibition El Dorado: Myths of Gold.

 Join us live on Instagram from your cell phone, or watch on YouTube after, for a series of remote visits to artists' studios to bring Americas Society's Visual Arts public programs to your home. Check out the series playlist. 

About the artists 

Juan Covelli uses technology as a medium; striving to decolonize the museum through digital practices, he releases archives from institutional control for the sake of emancipation. Covelli’s practice revolves around the technological potentials of three-dimensional scanning, modeling, and printing to readdress entrenched arguments of repatriation and colonial histories. His work investigates new materialities generated by the digital era, and focuses on the dynamics and approaches of the physical within the digital world, or the fluctuation between both. His work also explores the relationship between technology, heritage, archaeology, and digital colonialism. Using video, modelling, data sets, and coding he creates IRL and URL installation-based works which collapse historical practices with current models of display and digital aesthetics. 

Covelli was recently awarded the Lumen Prize for Moving Image and he has been nominated to Premio Luis Caballero in 2023. Solo and group shows include: Terra incognita, Museo de Pereira, Pereira (2022), Veneraciones, Tajo Taller, Mexico City, (2021) How to dust the surface, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery, Warrington (2018); and Nexcuitilamatl, Galería ADM, Mexico City (2017). As well as groups shows: Imagen Regional 9, Museo Miguel Angel Urrutia, Banco de La República, Bogotá Colombia; Transición hacia una civilización Planetaria, El Parqueadero, Banco de la República, Bogotá; Freeport, Epoch Gallery, Online; TERMINAL, Festival de Arte; Pensamiento y Tecnología FAP-TEK, Centro Cultural España, Montevideo, Uruguay; Colombi Pressentness, Esación Terrana, Bogotá; Well Now WTF?, Silicon Valet, Online; Simbiosis Entropica, Museo de Pereira, Pereira; Pixels Fest, Yeltsin Centre, Yekaterinburg (2020); ARTECAMARA, Artbo, Bogotá; Roca Lunar, Planetario Distrital, Bogotá; Festival de la Imagen, Centro Cultural Rogelio Salmona, Manizales (2019); INSIDE INTEL, Centre for Investigative Journalism; New Materialities in the Digital Age, Harlesden High Street Gallery curated by Anti-Materia, London; Out of Space, AVD Gallery, Online; The image of things, Guttormsgaard Arkiv, Oslo (2018); and The Choice of a New Generation, The Muse Gallery, London (2017); Deep Inside, V Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Trekhgornaya Manufaktura, Moscow, Russia (2016) 

Santiago Montoya's practice has been dedicated to the exploration of notions of value, nationalism, commodities and the universal consequences and nuances of the production and distribution of wealth. Initially a painter, an inspired digression was to incorporate the actual raw materials in his work – global currencies, gold, silver, copper and other precious materials – exposing the gulf between official state ideologies and reality itself. Montoya captures the collective consciousness, questioning the systems of power and shining a light on the disparities, injustices, and the absurd. Montoya’s works combine a wry humor and acute insight on a global subject that affects us all, and the inherent systems and structures that we live by. 

Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition Bitter Sweet at the Somerville Museum in Massachusetts, USA; Trust, Context Art Miami with Offshoot Arts; Elsewhere(s) at Untitled Art Fair, curated by José Luis Falconi and Estrellita Brodsky, Miami; Seeds of Resistance at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan, USA and Art Museum of the Americas, Washington D.C. Montoya’s work is highly collected in both public and private collections, including MFA Boston, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Dell Children’s Medical Centre, Austin, TX; AMA Washington D.C, Jill & Peter Kraus, and Estrellita & Daniel Brodsky, amongst others. 

Visit the Americas Society Visual Arts YouTube Channel for recordings of In the Studio Series and other previous events. 

Follow the conversation on Instagram: #IntheStudioAS | @artamericassociety

 More digital content from Visual Arts at Americas Society:

• Check out the current exhibition: El Dorado: Myths of Gold
• Check out the current iteration of our Flag Series: Luis Romero, El Dorado (2023) 
• Read about the previous exhibition: Sylvia Palacios Whitman: To Draw a Line with the Body 
• Read the exhibition catalog for This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975
• Watch videos of recent events: 
  • Performance of Sylvia Palacios Whitman’s Leaf 
  • Performance of Sylvia Palacios Whitman’s Human Paper Coil Performance of Rosario Zorraquín’s Compression—Oruguismo

In the Studio series 

Check out previous conversations with artists bringing us to their virtual studios.