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Link to artist's original page: Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

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Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work combines aspects of ethnography and theater to create film and video projects that have touched on subjects including anarchist communities, the relationship between artwork and work, and post-military land. Her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial 2017, Galería Kurimanzutto, and the Guggenheim Museum. She is co-founder of Beta-Local, an art organization and experimental education program in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In relation to Beta-Local, Santiago Muñoz organized the seminario itinerante--itinerant seminar-- which is a cohabitational and collaborative art-making, theorizing, and movement practice. The seminar involves walking many miles as well as camping, cooking, sharing resources, and sleeping outside as a group.

Career
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz received an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1993 and an MFA in Film and Video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. She has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions during the past 15 years.

Santiago Muñoz's first solo exhibition, The Black Cave, was presented in London in 2013. The exhibition featured two video projects, La Cueva Negra and Farmacopea, that explore how the Puerto Rican landscape has been influenced by the development of new infrastructure and tourism projects. La Cueva Negra focuses on the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial site in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. The site was accidentally uncovered during the construction of a highway twenty years ago. This video presents a dynamic history of the site through interviews with laborers, archeologists, and members of the surrounding community. Farmacopea is a short silent film that sheds light on how the tourism industry has transformed and de-historicized the landscape of Puerto Rico through the destruction of the incredible biodiversity of the Puerto Rican landscape to accommodate the real-estate needs of the growing tourist population. The film focuses on certain native toxic plant species, and the government's efforts to eradicate them. By focusing on the government's desire to render the landscape harmless, the film draws attention to how tourism encourages the depiction of Puerto Rico as an idyllic and de-politicized Caribbean paradise. Cosmogonia Futura (Future Cosmogony), 2013, is a narrative installed as a wall text at the entrance to the gallery where Santiago Muñoz's first solo exhibition, The Black Cave, was presented in 2013. This narrative created by Santiago Muñoz outlines the creation of the universe by Yaya, the extreme vital principle in Taíno mythology. In the narrative, the ancient legend of creation is transformed into a representation of a dystopian world after the end of capitalism. The text reads, "Before the beginning, there was the plastic swimming pool, the heat, the pig vine that climbs up the electrical wire, the empty offices with ceiling tiles." This narrative references the mythological world of Puerto Rico's indigenous Taíno people after their decimation due Columbus' arrival and the diseases brought by the Spanish.

Ojos Para Mis Amigos, a video piece created by Santiago Muñoz in 2014, explored the abandoned Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. The piece explored the displacement of families during the construction of the military base. During filming, Santiago Muñoz collaborated with Pedro Ortiz, a Ceiba resident whose family was displaced. The video follows several Ceiba residents, including Ortiz, and examines the lasting effects of military construction on the ability of residents to access land.

SelectWorks

 * La Cueva Negra (2013), digital video
 * Farmacopea (2013), 16mm film
 * That Which Identifies Them, Like the Eye of the Cyclops (2016), 3-channel HD video and sound, duration 8:00
 * Oneiromancer (2017), HD video, color, and sound, duration 26:00
 * Gosila (2018), 16mm transferred to digital, HD video, color, and sound, duration 10:00
 * Binaural (2019), 6-channel, 16mm film installation, color and black and white, silent, loop
 * Laurel Sabino y Jaguilla (2019), HD video, color, and sound, duration 11:00
 * Prisoner's Cinema (2013), digital color video with sound, duration 31:00
 * Marché Solomon (2015), digital color video with sound, duration 15:00

SoloExhibitions

 * The Black Cave (2013), Gasworks Gallery, in collaboration with the Tate Modern, London. The Black Cave (La Cueva Negra, 2013) follows the adventures of two boys as they roam the jungle and explore the scenery of their surroundings, all while unseen highway traffic hums in the background. The Black Cave (La Cueva Negra, 2013) draws on interviews with archaeologists and local residents, and explores the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial ground in Puerto Rico that was discovered during the construction of a highway and eventually paved over.
 * Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors (2016), Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL. This exhibition included a new work, Marché Salomon (2015), an alternative story about a popular Haitian market, a toxic tropical flower, or a newly discovered archeological site in Puerto Rico. The actors are ordinary people encouraged by the artist to use strategies from performance art and reenactment. The exhibition was organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Assistant Curator, María Elena Ortiz.
 * A Universe of Fragile Mirrors (2017), El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. This is the third exhibition of El Museo’s five-year series highlighting Latina artists. The exhibition consisted of continuous play film of non-linear narratives that push the established differences between documentary and fiction story-telling.
 * Song, Strategy, Sign (2016), New Museum, NY, NY. A series of 16mm portraits of anthropologists, activists, and artists working in Haiti and Puerto Rico capturing the aspirations and imagined futures of those who are deeply invested in alternative models of being, and using them as allegories for larger political possibilities in the region. The film work was displayed as a three-channel video inspired by Monique Wittig’s 1969 novel, Les Guérillères. The video was a work in progress that Muñoz developed during a residency at the museum.
 * That Which Identifies Them, Like the Eye of the Cyclops (2016), New Museum, NY. This exhibition featured films, sculptures, masks, and a text interview that follows a group of real women as they play music, tend to farm animals, and occupy protest signs at government buildings as a provocation of how an imagined future can be actualized in the present in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

GroupExhibitions

 * Whitney Biennial (2017), New York, NY. This is the 78th survey of American contemporary art in the museum’s ongoing series of annuals and biennials.
 * Condo New York (2017), New York, NY. Condo New York is a collaborative exhibition by 36 galleries across 16 New York spaces. Santiago Muñoz video work was featured in the group exhibition (with artists Yann Gerstberger and Ramiro Chaves) at the CHAPTER NY gallery with Galeria Agustina Ferreyra from San Juan, P.R.

Awards

 * Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2019)
 * Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2017)
 * Creative Capital Visual Arts Award (2015)
 * USA Ford Fellowship (2016)

Sandbox Practice Exercises
In 2016, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz had a solo show at the New Museum that was titled, That which identifies them like the eye of the Cyclops, which featured two films, sculptures, masks, and a text interview among other documentation.

Here is the link to the Wikipedia page of Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.

Here is a link to an article titled "Being Ready for What you Don't Know: A Conversation with Beatriz Santiago Muñoz" that discusses Muñoz's life history and career.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz's work is primarily based in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean where she both lives and works and is where she creates her film installations, objects, and documents.

List of Major Works Sandbox Exercise

 * (2013) The Black Cave (La Cueva Negra) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum