Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio

Artist’s Statement

I believe that focusing on multiple sites as a part of the same community and history is a crucial de-colonizing strategy and helps to expand the term native.

My work address migration by default, but I am more interested in the possibilities of an expanded understanding of identity and place-making. Our history is being erased, and I feel an urgency to reclaim the narrative of the Latinx identity in the U.S. and abroad. This erasure refers to the complex colonial underpinnings of our contemporary crises and to the importance of our cultural, technological, and economic contributions to the world.

I use materials that have a strong tie to pre-Hispanic cultures in Central America to document Central American communities in Los Angeles. The rubber works in the “Caucho” series are made from the sap of one non-native tree capturing the surface of another non-native species in a community of non-native people—all of which have become rooted and integral to the very essence of those multiple sites.

My work utilizes formal strategies within a primarily materialist practice, because colonial injustices have not only been directed towards humans. Environmental justice and social justice are deeply intertwined, and allowing material to be a collaborator in the works acknowledges it as a part of its own narrative. Perhaps the clearest way to follow the traces and branches of colonialism and historical oppression is to first claim total material non-neutrality. There is no neutral position within an ecological understanding of the world where environmental justice is inextricably linked to social justice, and all materials in art making (especially our bodies) are part of that conversation.

Website: eddieaparicio.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2013-2018

2018
My Veins Do No End In Me, The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, California
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Zona Maco, Mexico City

2016
Double Dip, Green Gallery, New Haven, CT

Select Group Exhibitions from 2011-2018

2018
No Longer Yours, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City
Force of Nature, Steve Turner, Los Angeles

2017
UPROOT, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY

2016
Partners, Abrons Art Center, New York

Select Fellowships and Awards:

2015
Schell Center For Human Rights Year-Long Fellowship, Yale University, CT

2014
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, VCCA, VA

2012
Sol LeWitt and Elizabeth Murray Studio Arts Award, Bard College, NY

Education:

B.A., 2012
Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY