MOCA Artist Film Series: Edgar Calel
Xar – Sueño de obsidiana (Obsidian Dream), 2020, 4min.

The MOCA Artist Film Series, presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation, is an active and dynamic platform for the presentation of artist films. Inspired by film and video works in MOCA’s renowned collection, these programs explore the critical issues of our time and place and focus on experiments in long-form, narrative, and feature-length films. With ongoing presentations in the Ahmanson Auditorium, all screenings feature artists in dialogue with fellow artists, historians, and critics.

Artist Edgar Calel found himself in São Paulo, Brazil, during the isolating COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. Inspired by vivid dreams, he penned a poem that became the script for his video Xar – Sueño de obsidiana. A haunting scene features Calel partially covered by a jaguar hide, traversing the empty expanse of the emblematic Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, designed in 1954 by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer for the São Paulo Biennial. This program will showcase Xar – Sueño de obsidiana, a video made in collaboration with Fernando Pereira dos Santos, alongside two of Calel's recent video works.

Calel will be present for a post-screening conversation with artist Beatriz Cortez, Associate Professor of Art at the University of California-Davis.

Edgar Calel (b. 1987, Chi Xot (San Juan Comalapa), Guatemala) studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Rafael Rodríguez Padilla. His recent solo exhibitions include Kaqchikitkit pa Copán at Desanexo Desapê, São Paulo (2023), B’alab’äj (Jaguar Stone) at SculptureCenter (2023), and Pa Ru Tun Che´ (From a Tree Top) at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City. Calel’s works have been featured in group exhibitions including Choreographies of the Impossible (Coreografías de lo imposible) at the 35th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (2023), Plural Perspectives (Perspectival plurales) at Soft Power, Berlin (2023), uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things (uMoya: El sagrado retorno de los objetos perdidos) at the 12th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2023), A Parábola do Progresso at SESC Pompéia, São Paulo (2022), Is It Morning for You Yet? (Ya es de día para ti?) at the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022), Virginia Pérez-Ratton. Centroamérica: deseo de lugar at MUAC, Mexico City (2019), and Transvisible: entro lo ya no y él aún no at the XIX Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala City, Guatemala.

Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist born in El Salvador and based in Los Angeles and Davis. Her work explores simultaneity, multiple temporalities, the untimely, and speculative imaginaries. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center (2023); Williams College Museum of Art (2023-2024); Commonwealth and Council (2022); Pitzer College Art Galleries (2022); and Craft Contemporary (2019). Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2018 and 2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2019); TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia (2019); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2020); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA (2020); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Panamá (2021); MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI (2021); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2021 and 2016); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2021), among others. Cortez is the recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship (2023), Borderlands Fellowship (2022-24), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016), among many others. Her work is represented in several collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Michigan State University Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; El Paso Museum of Art; Ford Foundation, New York, and the Getty Research Institute. Cortez received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in Latin American Literature from Arizona State University. She teaches sculpture and contemporary theory at the University of California, Davis.

MOCA Artist Film Series is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator with Alitzah Oros, Public Programming Associate, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

MOCA Artist Film Series is presented by The Edward F. Limato Foundation.