About the Exhibition
At a time of heightened division both at home and abroad, imagining a world of shared experience and solidarity between ideologically opposed groups seems like the stuff of dreamwork. Difference, and what to do with it, remains the most significant question of our era and forces a consideration of the role that identity—or, the representation of the individual “self” through personal idiosyncrasies, language, actions, beliefs, appearance, experiences, and forms of social belonging and/or oppression—plays in grappling with heterogeneity in the sociopolitical sphere.
Identity Measures presents a diverse group of artists working in a range of material practices that engage identity not as a fixed structure, but as an insistently mobile and often resistant assemblage of traits and vulnerabilities. This exhibition is predicated on the understanding that identity is shaped by a variety of historical, racial, gendered, socioeconomic, geographical, physical, and ideological experiences through time. By opening up a dialogue about difference through the language of contemporary visual art, this exhibition claims that one’s structural location in the world matters to the articulation of personal and collective identity—a process that poses itself as a dynamic site of agency, creativity, resistance, visibility, ambiguity, and belonging.
This exhibition is organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, and curated by Dr. Jordan Amirkhani. Support for this exhibition is provided by Sydney & Walda Besthoff, The Helis Foundation, the Welch Family Foundation, and the Visual Arts Exhibition Fund. This exhibition is also supported by the City of New Orleans through a Community Arts Grant, as well as by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council.
About Luis Cruz Azaceta
Luis Cruz Azaceta—a visual artist born in Havana, Cuba—is best known for his paintings, drawing, and mixed-media works. Azaceta emigrated to New York City at the age of 18 where he studied at the School of Visual Arts, and he has lived and worked in New Orleans since 1992. Over the course of his career, Azaceta’s work has addressed war, terrorism, displacement, identity, racism, and collapsing economies. Azaceta has exhibited extensively—both nationally and internationally—and has been awarded grants from organizations, such as The Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Joan Mitchell Foundation. His work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Whitney Museum of Art, New York, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Museo De Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, Marco, and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo De Monterrey, Mexico, among others.
Source: https://cacno.org/identitymeasures