El Museo del Barrio Names Artist List for Its 2024 Triennial, with an Expanded, Global Focus

El Museo del Barrio has named the 33 artists that will take part in the second edition of its triennial, which will run at the museum from October 10, 2024, to February 9, 2025.

This year, the exhibition will take the title “Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024” and be curated by El Museo’s chief curator Rodrigo Moura and curator Susanna V. Temkin, and guest curator María Elena Ortiz, who is a curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas.

The exhibition includes several closely watched artists, such as Carmen Argote, Christina Fernandez, Roberto Gil de Montes, Caroline Kent, Karyn Olivier, and Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya. The exhibition’s three youngest participants—Alina Perez, Ser Serpas, and Kathia St. Hilaire—were all born in 1995, while the oldest exhibiting artist, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, was born in 1929.

In an interview with ARTnews, Moura said the curators chose the title of “Flow States” because they wanted something that was “open-ended” that could at first read as a “resilient, positive tone” but also imply different undertones upon further consideration, similar to that of the first Trienal’s title, “ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21.”

“This idea of a creative state where body and mind come together to put things into the world—any act that could happen under a state of flow,” Moura said. “And, ‘states’ refers to countries or nation-states, this idea of going beyond the boundaries of states through a flow, a movement of fluid exchange between different groups.”

Within the exhibition’s framework, that exchange, Moura said, also relates to the idea of diaspora, both of the Latinx community in the United States, as well as more broadly, now encompassing related diasporas and migration patterns within Latin American countries, from non–Spanish speaking Caribbean countries to the US and England, and from Puerto Rico to Europe.

“At the same time, one of the things we want to bring with this show is this idea of diaspora writ large, without losing our main focus on Latinx artists,” he said. “The idea of migration and the different flows of occupations, of cultures, of languages, of styles, of artists. It’s an understanding that the Latinx diaspora isn’t separate from other diasporic movements. There are so many affinities, solidarities, there is so much shared common ground.”

Four years ago, when El Museo relaunched its recurring exhibition series, previously known as “The (S) Files” and “La Bienal,” which ran from 1999 to 2013, as La Trienal, the museum wanted to also expand its purview. The original shows focused on artists working in New York and the Tristate Area. The first edition of La Trienal provided a scope of Latinx art-making nationwide. “One thing we realized with ‘Estamos Bien’ is that not only proved the relevance of this field but also showed how many conversations could be started by putting these artists in the same show,” Moura said.

And now, this second edition will also look more globally: Norberto Roldan is based in Roxas City, Philippines, the city where he was born; Barbados-born Alberta Whittle is now based in Glasgow, Scotland; and Studio Lenca, first migrated to the US from El Salvador and is now based in Margate, England.

As with the first edition of La Trienal, “Flow States” will also include a guest curator on its team: María Elena Ortiz, who joined the Modern Fort Worth in 2022 after nearly a decade at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

“María Elena is a colleague whose work we’ve been admiring for a long time at El Museo,” Moura said. “In her research and curatorial work, there’s a pan-Caribbean perspective to be explored, to be elevated, and to learn from, too.”

Moura said he expects this artist to continue the tradition that El Museo’s biennial-style exhibitions have long served as “a launch pad for several artists and their careers,” whether they be early in their careers or “artists who hadn’t been seen much lately who could benefit from the exposure of a show like this.”

The full artist list follows below.

Carmen Argote b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Hellen Ascoli b. 1984, Guatemala City, Guatemala; lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland
Esteban Cabeza de Baca b. 1985, San Ysidro, California; lives and works in Queens, New
York, and the Southwestern United States
Widline Cadet b. 1992, Pétion-Ville, Ayiti; lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Liz Cohen b. 1973, Phoenix, Arizona; lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona
Tony Cruz Pabón b. 1977, Puerto Rico; lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Lance De Los Reyes b.1977, Houston, Texas; d. 2021 New York, New York
Christina Fernandez b. 1965, Los Angeles, California; lives and works in Los Angeles,
California
Verónica Gaona b. 1994, Brownsville, Texas; lives and works in Houston, Texas
Roberto Gil de Montes b. 1950, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Nayarit, Mexico
Maria A. Guzmán Capron b. 1981, Milan, Italy; lives and works in Oakland, California
Madeline Jiménez Santil b. 1986, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; lives and works in
Mexico City, Mexico, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Caroline Kent b. 1975, Sterling, Illinois; lives and works in Chicago, Illinois
Koyoltzintli b. 1983, New York, New York; lives and works in New Jersey
Anina Major b. 1981, Nassau, Bahamas; lives and works in New York, New York
Mario Martinez b. 1953, Penjamo, Scottsdale, Arizona; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
Mark Menjívar b. 1980, Virginia; lives and works in San Antonio, Texas
Karyn Olivier b. 1968, Trinidad and Tobago; lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Alina Perez b. 1995, Miami, Florida; lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut
Carlos Reyes b. 1977, Chicago, Illinois; lives and works in New York, New York, and Caguas,
Puerto Rico
Gadiel Rivera-Herrera b. 1963, San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives and works in San Juan, Puerto
Rico
Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya b. 1989, Parral, Mexico; nomad
Norberto Roldan b. 1953, Roxas City, Philippines; lives and works in Roxas City
Sarah Rosalena b. 1982, Los Angeles, California; lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Ser Serpas b. 1995, Los Angeles, California; lives and works in New York, New York
Chaveli Sifre b. 1987, Würzburg, Germany; lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Kathia St. Hilaire b. 1995, Palm Beach, Florida; lives and works in New York, New York
Studio Lenca based in Margate, England
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess b. 1929, Caracas, Venezuela; lives and works in Venice,
California
Sarita Westrup b. 1989, Edinburg, Texas; lives and works in Dallas, Texas, and Penland, North
Carolina
Alberta Whittle b. 1980, Bridgetown, Barbados; lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland
Cosmo Whyte b. 1982, St. Andrews, Jamaica; lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Joe Zaldivar b. 1990, Rosemead, California; lives and works in Los Angeles, California