“What do we carry with us as we move between places, and how do those experiences become part of who we are?”
This is the question asked by Mexican Canadian artist Gina Ortiz-Figueroa’s exhibition I Contain Multitudes, From the Yukon to Patagonia. In an interview with The Peak, Oritz-Figueroa breaks down her artistic process and what the work intends to show. According to the exhibition website, she was educated as an architect and carries some of this training through “structure with intuition, layer[ed] geometric form, patterns, colour, and texture.”
On October 24, Oritz-Figueroa and facilitator Miret Rodriguez will conduct a reception to accompany the arts displays. According to the exhibition website, this event will “invite audiences to consider how art can open conversations about place, cultural identity, and the many influences we carry with us.” In advance of this event, “I’m not sure if my cultural origins influenced my interest for travelling more than my geographic origin,” Ortiz-Figueroa shared. “I come from northeast Mexico, this region is closer to the USA [central Turtle Island] and maybe that early exposure to another language and culture had an impression on me.”
Rodriguez is the creative director of Curated Tastes (an organization dedicated at making local arts more accessible) and has “interviewed Latinx artists in Canada about their immigration stories and how they express their experiences through art.” It seems like community outreach is an important part of Rodriguez’s cultural navigation as the October 24 dialogue will be “primarily in English, with French and Spanish woven in, creating opportunities for audiences from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds to connect through art and shared experiences.”
The work featured in Multitudes comprises a series of shape-forward paintings. As it was described on the website, the exhibit “holds both order and spontaneity,” and is bursting with colour like the artist’s other pieces posted on Instagram. Ortiz-Figueroa expressed that her practice is “greatly influenced by the mid-century modern style with Neo-Mexicanism contemporary colour and elements in a personal way.”
Oritz-Figueroa stated that the work represents “change and transformation.” She expanded that “one shape can be transformed but still be recognizable. In my life and in my practice, change doesn’t mean to replace everything but to reorganize and to reimagine, and be able to recognize that familiar shape — the oneself through a new light.”
Part of this change could be seen through the adaptation of her architecture background. Oritz-Figueroa’s dad was in architecture, “so that was a big part of my upbringing and everyday life.” She studied in Mexico in the ‘90s. After a break raising her family living abroad, Ortiz-Figueroa immigrated to Canada in 2011 and wanted to do something “different and creative.” Resultantly — as the artist’s statement put it — this exhibit was developed over a “year of travel along the Pacific West Coast,” and “allow[s] many experiences and emotions to coexist — sometimes in harmony, sometimes in tension.” Multitudes is an exhibition that combines many influences in a colourful nod to mid-century modern art, and I believe that combining such artistic display in tandem with dialogue allows viewers to not only appreciate an artist’s works, but also peer into their influences and thoughts.
I Contain Multitudes, From Yukon to Patagonia will be on display on October 24, from 4:30–6:30 p.m. at Alliance Française Vancouver.
