Ofelia Marquez: Clipped Ears Don’t Serve A Weeping Wolf, Sang The Coyote To The Blood Moon
April Artist-In-Residence, Ofelia Marquez, hosted “Clipped Ears Don’t Serve A Weeping Wolf, Sang The Coyote To The Blood Moon” . During the course of their residency, Ofelia Marquez explored the Coyote and its symbolic connotations as trickster in Native American culture and its latinx term used for those who help undocumented people cross the border from Mexico to the U.S. as a postcolonial dialogue for pushing boundaries. Culminating in the Closing Celebration, Ofelia and collaborating artist von curtis presented multi-faceted sculptures that interacted with sound inviting the audience to witness the archetypes of trickster and Coyote unfold via performative gestures.
As part of their residency, Ofelia hosted a series of family-friendly, Saturday workshops aboard Side Street’s mobile woodworking classrooms. They taught simple woodblock printmaking using scraps of wood from our year-round youth woodworking programs. Check out our events page for more info.
Ofelia Marquez was the second artist to participate in “Nourished” a curatorial project inspired by Dominique Moody’s “Our Garden of Dreams,” a mobile community garden completed at the end of 2018. Artists were asked to engage with the theme of nourishment over the course of a one month residency culminating in workshops and an exhibition of work intended to nourish the body, creativity, nature, identity, and community.
BIOS
Ofelia Marquez (b. 1986) is a first generation Mexican- American artist based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in sculpture at UCLA and is currently an art restorer at Aleksei Tivetskys Art Restoration and Conservation studio. Ofelia Marquez has recently exhibited at; Human Resources, The Mistake Room, Anonymous Gallery, New Wight Gallery, the William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art, Avenue 50, and REDCAT. Her practice consists of woodcarving, sewing, drawing , and assemblage as an assessment of emotions while simultaneously making connections to social constructs and its’ effects on the body and mind.
von curtis is a declassified artist born in southern c.a. a graduate of calarts. educator and researcher of Black cultural aesthetics. In a non-linear and codified manner von is tracing contemporary modes of Black performativity to historical gestures of resistance. for example von often contrast hiphop’s improv “cypha”, to the plantation ring shout! Believing that both are activating the same oratory story telling, circular formation and polyrhythmic techniques.
