A Conversation with Pedro Reyes on Geles Cabrera

Artist and curator Pedro Reyes will be in conversation on Instagram Live with Tie Jojima and Rachel Remick, co-curators of the exhibition Geles Cabrera: Museo Escultórico. Reyes and the co-curators will be discussing Cabrera's artwork and legacy. Tune in to the Instagram Live on our page @americassociety.visualarts.

About the artist

Pedro Reyes (Mexico City, 1972) studied architecture but considers himself a sculptor, although his works integrate elements of theater, psychology and activism. His work takes on a great variety of forms, from penetrable sculptures (Capulas, 2002–08) to puppet productions (The Permanent Revolution, 2014 and Manufacturing Mischief, 2018). In 2015, he received the US State Department Medal for the Arts and the Ford Foundation Fellowship. He held a visiting scholar position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the fall of 2016 and conducted his residency at MIT’s CAST as the inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist. Recently, Reyes was commissioned by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists together with The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—winners of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize—to raise awareness about the increasing risk of nuclear conflict, for which he developed Amnesia Atómica to be presented in Times Square, New York in May 2022 at the time of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference at the United Nations. For his work on disarmament, Reyes was granted the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2021. At the same time, he opened his largest survey to date in Mexico at the Marco Museum in Monterrey. In 2022, Reyes had his first solo show in Europe at Marta Herford Museum in Germany where a large body of his early works was presented.

About the exhibition

Geles Cabrera: Museo Escultórico is the first solo exhibition in the United States dedicated to Mexican artist Geles Cabrera, who is one of the most prominent female sculptors of her country. Geles Cabrera: Museo Escultórico will feature artwork created over 40 years of her career and will be on view from June 8 through July 30, 2022.

Curated by Americas Society Chief Curator and Director of Visual Arts Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Assistant Curator Tie Jojima, and Assistant Curator Rachel Remick, the exhibition will display approximately 50 of Cabrera’s sculptures. The works reveal the artist’s interest in the human body through her experimentation with different materials such as volcanic rock, bronze, terracotta, papier-mâché, and molded plexiglass. Between abstraction and figuration, Cabrera carved and molded human forms evoking labor, motherhood, and human relationships. The show also includes archival documentation about her artistic practice in Mexico City. ​

Born in Mexico City in 1926, Cabrera studied at Mexico’s Academia Nacional de San Carlos and La Esmeralda art schools, where she began working in sculpture. At the time, sculpture was almost exclusively practiced by male artists, and women were dissuaded from pursuing a career in this discipline. However, Cabrera persisted and, by 1949, had her first solo exhibition at the Mont-Orendáin Gallery in Mexico City. Cabrera found artistic success in the 1950s alongside the “Generación de la Ruptura” (“Breakaway Generation”), a grouping of Mexican artists who, from the 1950s onward, diverged from the legacies of Mexican muralism. Cabrera’s abstracted human forms aligned with shifts in Mexican art away from representation and nationalism—embodied in muralism—toward abstraction and individualism.

Visit the Americas Society Visual Arts YouTube Channel for recordings of other previous events.

Follow the conversation on Instagram: @americassociety.visualarts