Jackie Amézquita Nuestro Norte siempre a sido el Sur
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Jackie Amézquita: Nuestro Norte siempre a sido el Sur (Our North Has Always Been The South), the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery and an expansion of Amézquita’s award-winning work featured in the Hammer Museum’s 2023 Made in LA biennial. Amézquita utilizes soil, fruit, masa, rainwater, copper, and other natural materials in works that speak to the complex histories of migration, the multivalent meanings of borders, and the many stories the land carries. The exhibition features innovative compositions on copper, obsidian, and earth, as well as works that push this medium towards larger, more colorful results. Accompanying the exhibition opening will be a performance that gathers artists from across the globe in a multi-dimensional, harmonized effort of mobility, migration and regeneration.
Amézquita developed the process for her soil paintings over much trial and error, and must adapt it to best suit each new soil – works in the exhibition integrate soils from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The finished surface is a mix of soil, masa, and rainwater; onto which Amézquita draws with a simple incised line reminiscent of pre-Columbian glyphs and writing systems. The paintings are then frozen, baked, limewashed, and framed in thin strips of copper. Working in this way allows Amézquita to connect with the land literally, but also places her work within an ancestral tradition of symbolic storytelling that stretches back to carved Mayan writing.
Jackie Amézquita (Quetzaltengo, Guatemala, b.1985) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is an artist with a multidisciplinary practice. Her research is articulated through the use of material and forms associated with pre-Columbian cultures. Amézquita creates public performances, installations, and objects that fuse indigenous mythologies with contemporary community engagement.
Amézquita received her M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2022 and her B.F.A. from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, in 2018. She has exhibited with The Hammer Museum, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) CA, LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) CA, 18th St Art Center CA, The Armory Center of the Arts CA, Vincent Price Art Museum CA, The Annenberg Space for Photography CA, Human Resources Los Angeles CA, MAD (Museum of Art and Design) NY. Amézquita is the recipient of the Mohn Public Recognition Award (2023), Mohn Land Award (2023), Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts Los Angeles Art Fund (2022), and National Performance Network Fund (2022). Amézquita has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, ARTnews, and The Art Newspaper, LA. Weekly, hyperallergic, Walker Art Center magazine.