Americas Society Presents – Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos

Opening at Americas Society on January 29, 2025, the exhibition Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos, highlights the conversations and collaborations between two artists and their shared interest in ancient cultures of the Americas.

The Los Angeles-based artists Beatriz Cortez (b.1970, San Salvador) and rafa esparza (b.1982, Los Angeles) have over the years talked about ancient and contemporary ideas of the Earth, the cosmos, the underworld, and the knowledge developed by ancient Indigenous people. Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos presents works selected by the artists that show how this knowledge flows around all beings and matter across the cosmos.

These discussions inform their practices and have also led to numerous co-created projects such as Nomad 13, Xolotl's Time Travels, Solar Star, Puente, and Portal Sur, after Copán.

“I see my sculptures as time-travelers. I don’t always know if they are coming here from the past or from the future, but I know that they are spaces of generosity. They honor the technologies, strategies, spirituality, and knowledge of ancient peoples and celebrate their survival in the future," said Cortez in the exhibition’s publication.

In the same book, esparza talked about his collaboration with Cortez. "It feels empowering to be boundless in our conversations and in our creative journeys and to work in ways that are reciprocal and not unilateral," he said.

The curatorial team at Americas Society acted as coordinators, mediators, and facilitators of these artists’ dialogues while minimizing their intellectual input “in order to allow the artists to fully tell their own story,” said Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Art at Americas Society.

“Beatriz Cortez × rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos is not only an opportunity for the artists to reflect on their individual and collaborative work but is also a way to expand what curating means,” said Iglesias Lukin. “In turn, it will draw viewers’ attention to the fluid boundaries of authorship and the collective spirit inherent in artmaking by exposing the networks of personal relations that inform artistic creation and animate culture.”

In Hyperspace: -100km + ∞, 2025, esparza honors the Olmec civilization, one of the earliest known civilizations in Mesoamerica. The sculpture shows an Olmec head that appears distorted as if on the edge of a wormhole. The work is made from the artist's family adobe recipe mixed with basalt, the volcanic stone that original Olmec heads were carved out of. It charts the journey molten magma can travel, from the depths of the Earth's crust to when it erupts onto the surface, and the infinite journeys and forms the basalt can take as a stone.

Alongside esparza’s work will be two steel sculptures produced by Cortez, Cabeza de Jaguar (Monumento #47), 2022, and Gift of the Artist to the Ancient Object Labeled as Human Head Emerging from Monster Jaws, One Migrant to Another, in Memory of your True Name and your Land, 2023, which evoke looted ancient objects and examine how people and matter travel across land. 

The works in the exhibition will be placed atop an adobe brick installation by esparza, which will occupy part of the gallery to allow the works to meet the Earth and the soil from where they are removed.

Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos inaugurates a series in which Americas Society invites two artists who are friends and collaborators to jointly explore how they influence each other's work. This new approach shares insight into a vital part of artistic production that is seldom the subject of exhibitions: the conversations that artists have with colleagues and companions that inform and enrich their practice.

To accompany the show, Americas Society will offer a series of free public programs, and a catalogue that features a conversation between the artists.

Press contact: mediarelations@as-coa.org

Funders 

The presentation of Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos is made possible by support from Liana Krupp, as well as by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Americas Society acknowledges the generous support from the Arts of the Americas Circle members: Amalia Amoedo, Estrellita B. Brodsky, Virginia Cowles Schroth, Isabella Hutchinson, Carolina Jannicelli, Diana López and Herman Sifontes, Elena Matsuura, Maggie Miqueo, Antonio Murzi, Gabriela Pérez Rocchietti, Marco Pappalardo and Cintya Poletti Pappalardo, Carolina Pinciroli, Erica Roberts, Sharon Schultz, and Edward J. Sullivan.