Still from Luma by Catalina Tuca, 2024. Photo courtesy the artist.
Closing Program: Luma by Catalina Tuca
With a performance by María Verónica San Martín, herbalism session by Antonia Estela Pérez, and food by Oscar Riquelme
Date: Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Time: 6:00–9:00 pm
Join us in the gallery for a special evening program to mark the culmination of the solo exhibition Luma by Catalina Tuca, mentored by Esperanza Mayobre. The event will include a performance by artist María Verónica San Martín, session by herbalist Antonia Estela Pérez, and food by chef Oscar Riquelme. These participatory engagements respond to the ideas in Tuca’s solo show in various ways.
María Verónica San Martín will present a performance as part of her ongoing project Dignidad, conceived of as a multimedia visual and sonic installation and associated activations. It explores the history of Colonia Dignidad, a colony in the south of Chile founded in 1961 by Paul Schäfer. Schäfer was a former Nazi soldier who left Germany to establish and solidify a community after World War II. Known for their association with the CIA-backed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), leaders of Colonia Dignidad built an agricultural enclave that became a detention camp where minors were abused and hundreds of dissidents were tortured and murdered. Dignidad makes visible multilayered and institutional systems of violence in Chile and in the colony—now called Villa Baviera. Incorporating extensive archival research and interviews, San Martín utilizes performance to physically and metaphorically deconstruct and reconstruct latent structures of power. Beyond its shared geographic and political context, the work parallels that of Tuca in unveiling hidden narratives that create more expansive spaces for cultural understanding.
Antonia Estela Pérez, an herbalist, gardener, and educator, will present a session that shares plants from the south of Chile, where the luma tree—a central figure in Catalina Tuca’s show—lives. Considering the dichotomies of beauty and violence present in Tuca’s work, Pérez will discuss the symbologies these plants carry, highlighting practices of communing with the natural world that offer forms of resistance from oppression. They will also make and serve tea from these plants to guests in the gallery. The transformation of flora makes visible possibilities for engagement of resources in ways that are healing and regenerative to both human and non-human life. The session draws upon themes shared with Tuca’s practice, which explores the intersections between personal and collective memory. Pérez’s work is rooted in their passion for sharing knowledge that interrupts notions of individualism and separatism from nature, in order to grow toward collaborative and symbiotic communities.
Alongside the performance and session, chef Oscar Riquelme will present a communal style preparation of fish, grilled on the sidewalk outside of CUE’s gallery space and accompanied by seasonal vegetables inspired by Chiloé, where Tuca’s film—on view in the exhibition—takes place. Chiloé is an island in the south of Chile isolated from the mainland and known for its three national parks, cool and wet climate, vibrant agriculture, and the persistence of many indigenous cultural practices visible in local food, medicine, and domestic life. Charles Darwin visited the island while conceptualizing his theory of evolution; it is home to a diverse ecosystem of plant species native to the region since long before colonial exchange. There are, for example, 300 different names for potatoes grown in Chiloé, one of which has become the most widely cultivated variety of potato worldwide. Chef Riquelme draws upon this verdant landscape to prepare an informal sampling of shared plates that celebrate the land and its resources, highlighting the beauty of ingredients in their natural forms.
To accompany the performance and food will be gin by Patagonia-based distillery Tepaluma, natural wine from independent Chilean vineyards, and homemade pie by poet and artist Ana Anu.
Join us to celebrate Luma by Catalina Tuca and to come together in a collaborative space for reflection. The event will continue conversations from the exhibition that open up existing dichotomies between nature, humanity, beauty, and violence—aligning with the intent of Tuca’s practice to blur boundaries between the local and the global, the personal and the collective.
The event is free, and all are welcome.
About the Event Collaborators:
María Verónica San Martín is a Chilean born, New York-based multidisciplinary artist and printmaker. Her work explores the impacts in culture of history, memory, and trauma through archives, artist books, installations, sculptures, and performances. She is a Whitney Museum ISP fellow artist and a scholar at the Center for Book Arts, and she has participated in numerous international art residencies. San Martín has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), the Chilean government, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, with four solo exhibitions in 2023, a commission for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, a recent performance at Lincoln Center, a public artwork at Rockefeller Center, and participation in the New York Immigrant Artist Biennial. Her work is in the collections of the Met, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Pompidou Center, and Museum Meermanno, among others. She is currently working on an ongoing series called “Moving Memorials,” which is composed of 203 artist books with printmaking.
San Martín teaches at Parsons, The New School, and the Center for Book Arts in New York, and she has been a visiting professor at Penland School of Craft (NC) and at Miami University (OH). She has led workshops for the Vera List Center, Weeksville Heritage Center, the NMWA, and Mixteca. She also serves on the board of Booklyn Art and is part of its artist and educational programs. She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in Madrid in September 2024.
Antonia Estela Pérez is a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, educator, community organizer, co-founder, and artist born and raised in New York City. Growing up in a first generation household existing at the intersections of land stewardship, education, and social justice, their passion for herbs and plant medicine bridges the relationships between rural and urban spaces. With over 10 years of education including environmental and urban studies at Bard College, Clinical Herbalism at Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine, and learning with herbalists and elders throughout Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Thailand, Pérez facilitates workshops and produces events as the co-founder of NY based collective, Brujas, and Herban Cura, a space centering Indigenous, Black, Queer and Trans communities in the education of land connection.
In addition to being a co-founder and facilitating workshops in spaces such as Reed, Stanford, New School, and MoMA PS1, Perez is a respected gardener who has helped in the initiation and development of food prosperity for marginalized communities, namely Salam Community Garden, Sweet Freedom farm, Bard farm, and Soul Fire Farm. As a food and environmental justice educator, Pérez’s work is rooted in their passion for sharing knowledge that interrupts notions of individualism and separatism from nature to grow towards collaborative and symbiotic communities.
Oscar Riquelme is a chef who creates meals and events ranging from special occasions, cocktail parties, multi-course tastings, and open-fire barbeques for clients throughout New York City and the surrounding areas. His food is informed by his upbringing in Chile, in a region where the bounty of nature was always abundant, and where fresh game, seafood, and beautiful produce are ever present elements of the table. His style of cooking centers food that is seasonal and social, and blends the rustic and the refined. It reflects the mix of European and indigenous influences he grew up with, and is also inspired by his travels throughout the Americas, Europe and parts of Asia Pacific. He explores and builds recipes with new and familiar ingredients inspired by history, friends, family, and travels.
Chef Riquelme has worked on the line in many New York City restaurants, including as the Sous Chef of Café Triskell under Executive Chef Philippe Fallait (formerly of Jean Georges) and as part of the brigade at Glasserie, under Executive Chef Eldad Shem Tov (formerly of Aquavit and Noma). In 2015, he launched a Brooklyn-based super club with his wife called La copa rota, which they ran for several years. In 2018, he was the recipient of a culinary prize from the Regione Basilicata in Italy, which culminated in a teaching, learning, and media tour of the region. Recently, he participated in the Common Ground Summit in Kaua’i, Hawaii.
About the Exhibiting Artist:
Catalina Tuca (b. Santiago, Chile) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, educator, and independent curator. After earning a BFA and a degree in Visual Arts Education, she developed her career in Santiago, Chile by showing her work in solo and group exhibitions, teaching visual arts and film, and creating and directing art spaces.
Tuca has had residencies at Youkobo Art Space (Tokyo, Japan); Taller 7 (Medellin, Colombia); and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (United States). In 2016, she moved to the U.S. to pursue an MFA at Rutgers University, which she received in 2018. She has been a member at NEW INC (New York), a resident at NARS Foundation (New York), a fellow at the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program (New York), a resident with Collider Artist Residency at Contemporary Calgary (Canada), and a grantee of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York). She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute. Tuca lives and works in Brooklyn, New York..
About the Exhibition Mentor:
Esperanza Mayobre is a Brooklyn-based Venezuelan artist who creates fictive laboratory spaces. She inserts herself as a hero, writing a role for herself in the work. She uses light as a metaphor for birth; drawings to create infinite lines; candles to create lines of light; dust to convert illegal to legal aliens. She gives away money to talk about the debt of Third World countries, and makes elegant graffiti to portray urban chaos.
Mayobre has exhibited at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; the Americas Society; Baxter Street Camera Club; the Fuller Craft Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Museo Eduardo Sivori, Buenos Aires; the Queens Museum; The State University of New York Westchester Community College; La Caja Centro Cultural Chacao, Caracas; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center; MIT CAVS; BRIC; the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC; the Contemporary Museum of El Salvador; and the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennial, South Korea. She has participated in many residency and fellowship programs and has received numerous awards, including the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, the Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant, the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace, and a fellowship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been in Artishock, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the New York Times, Creative Time Reports, Arte al Día, and Art in America.