Artist Talk - Salvador Jiménez-Flores

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Friday, 06 December, 2019 - 12:00 pm to Friday, 06 December, 2019 - 1:00 pm

Center for the Visual Arts
Room 165

The School of Art presents an artist talk with visiting artist in print media and photography Salvador Jiménez-Flores on Friday, Dec. 6.  Jiménez-Flores is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Jalisco, México and Assistant Professor in ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The artist talk will take place in room 165 at the Center for the Visual Arts from 12-1 p.m.  Free and open to the public.

Since coming to the United States, Jiménez-Flores has contributed to the art scene by producing a mixture of socially conscious installation, public, and studio-based art. He has presented his work at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Casa de la Cultura in Jalisco, México amongst others. Jiménez-Flores recently completed a two year-long artist residency at the Harvard Ceramics Program, Office of the Arts at Harvard University. Also he served as the Artist-In-Residence for the City of Boston. Jiménez-Flores is a recipient of the grants Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, The New England Foundation for the Arts, and was awarded the Kohler Arts Industry Residency for 2019. 

Artist Statement:

My art process is a time machine. I like to look back and forth and fly through borders. Dialogue and contradiction are essential to my work because they describe the complexity of our crossbred society. I am particularly interested in events that have shaped history in the Americas. The study of these formative events helps me to understand the present and gives me a glimpse of our society’s direction for the future.

I am a nomadic artist who journeys through the Americas, creating rasquache art* and high art, speaking Español, English and Spanglish. Occasionally, I feel I have a static sense of identity and sometimes I have an inventory of multiple identities. I fit in here and there but No soy ni de aquí ni de allá. I am one, in two worlds. 

Similarly, In my art practice I am interested in material experimentation, the understanding of their properties, the meaning they carry, and their histories. This allows me to play with different mediums such as drawing, print-making, ceramics, wood, metals, installation, and socially engaged art.

The content of my work is socio-political and is driven by my life experiences. In my work I explore the themes of colonization, migration (voluntary or involuntary), “the other,” stereotypes, cultural appropriation, and futurism. As an artist I feel I have the responsibility to address the issues that affect my community, create awareness, and propose actions through my art.

Through mainstream media and in most sci-fi content, the future is generally imagined as white. People of color have been erased from the future all together. My latest research is about exploring and developing a Rascuache-Futuristic aesthetic in my artwork, where I could articulate pre-Columbian, colonial, and post-colonial histories. I like to imagine and create a future where the protagonist looks like me, understands me, and others can relate as well.

* rasquache in Spanish means ‘leftover’ or ‘of no value.’ Rasquachismo or rasquache art describes an attitude or lifestyle of the underdog, which uses ‘assemblage’ or ‘found object’ techniques in sculpture and installation.