Art | Reclaiming History and Voice through Carlos Motta’s Social Sculptures

TORONTO — We wanted to share with you loads of images of works by multidisciplinary Columbian artist Carlos Motta. Motta employs video, performance, photography and sculpture to explore questions of identity, sexuality and politics.

Above image: Carlos Motta, Untitled, 1998, Archival inkjet print, 30 x 45 inches. Offered by P.P.O.W Gallery

Since moving to the United States in 1996, Motta has become interested in questions of representation and the experience of democracy; and how a dominant culture can shape (and assimilate) that experience.

Cultivating conversation around counter narratives that recognize these suppressed histories, communities and identities, Motta chronicles criminalized longing, the conquered and the abused. His ‘social sculptures,’ are an opportunity for those to express their narrative—their voice, the Art Review writes.

Rather than flipping the table of history, Motta seeks in his poetic objects and social actions a redemption for all our stories, united by our difference too often erased by a dominant culture.

Motta’s work is also known for its engagement with queer culture and activism and for its insistence the inherent politics of sex and gender demand definite positions against injustice, his bio states. This is profoundly realized in his most recent, and first solo, exhibition Beloved Martina at Mercer Union (Toronto, Canada, April 14 2016 – June 4, 2016).

Motta presents a new series of 3D sandstone prints that depict the mythological figure of the “hermaphrodite,” based on sculptures from Greek and Roman antiquity and the Renaissance, and photographs from the late nineteenth century. Exhibited in a museum-like installation, the sculptures confront the institutional drive to classify and define with its authoritative gaze.

Motta’s use of 3D printing in his recent sculptural work takes on the tradition of 19th century Blanc de Chine (fired white unglazed porcelain).

As Motta’s work challenges the way history is constructed, narrated and disseminated, he discusses in this video his work and its relationship with U.S. interventions in Latin America.

This year, Motta was awarded the The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fine Arts for his work. You can see more of Motta’s work on Artsy.

Do you love or loathe these works of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics? Let us know in the comments.