Professor Beatriz Cortez, along with her friend and frequent co-creator, the artist rafa esparza, have collaborated on a new exhibition that centers on their interest in cultures of ancient Indigenous people and how they relate to contemporary ideas of the Earth and the cosmos. The exhibition, Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos, opens Jan. 29 and will be on view at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas home location — 680 Park Avenue, New York City — until May 17, 2025. 

“I see my sculptures as time-travelers. I don’t always know if they are coming here from the past or from the future, but I know that they are spaces of generosity. They honor the technologies, strategies, spirituality, and knowledge of ancient peoples and celebrate their survival in the future,” says Cortez. esparza says of the exhibition, “I am moved by this conversation about ancient objects and about migrating and about having a map and a community to help you find your way when you leave and when you return.” Several works in the exhibition are be placed atop an adobe brick installation by esparza to allow the works to meet the Earth and the soil from where they were removed.

The Art at Americas Society program boasts the longest-standing space in the United States dedicated to exhibiting and promoting art from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada. Since the mid-1960s, they have been producing both historical and contemporary exhibitions, publications, as well as public and educational programs, featuring outstanding artists, curators, critics, and scholars. Promoting a plural view of culture from the continent, Americas Society has achieved a unique and renowned leadership position in the field. The mission of the Americas Society is “to foster an understanding of the contemporary political, social, and economic issues confronting Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, and to increase public awareness and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritage of the Americas and the importance of the inter-American relationship.”

The presentation of Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos is made possible by support from Liana Krupp, as well as by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. 

Read more about Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos in Art Daily here.

Images:
Foreground: Beatriz Cortez, Kaqjay, and FIEBRE Ediciones, Altar de Kaqjay, 2021, Steel. Courtesy of the artists. 
Altar de Kaqjay, a collaborative work made by Beatriz Cortez, Kaqjay, and FIEBRE Ediciones, was inspired by the ancient Altar of Kaqjay, which was found inside a home near the town of Patzicía in Guatemala. The large-scale stone altar, made by the ancestors of this Kaqchikel community, was carved on all four sides with figures of speculative creatures and animals. This work was based on the belief that ancient objects should remain where they were placed by the ancestors, while their ideas, spirituality, and cultural significance should travel to the places where the Kaqchikel people, the Maya, and others who share their ancestors now live. In this installation, the altar is reconfigured in steel.

rafa esparza, Adobe Bricks, 2024, Adobe. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. rafa esparza inherited adobe brick-making from his father, Ramón Esparza, but learned the process as an adult by working with his father to heal their relationship, which had been severed due to rafa’s coming out. rafa and his father connected through the process of working with land and saw it as a first step toward mending their relationship. Years later, his father became an integral collaborator in rafa’s projects, making adobe installations that honor ancient forms of construction, the dormant seeds and sprouting life within each adobe brick, the joy of communal labor, and the unique soil at each location where rafa has worked.

Background left: 
Beatriz Cortez, Cabeza de Jaguar (Monumento #47), 2022, Steel, patina. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council.
Beatriz Cortez’s Cabeza de Jaguar (Monumento #47) recreates in steel a multispecies head, speculated to be a jaguar, originally carved in stone and looted from present-day El Salvador in 2015. Recreation and reinterpretation become a gesture of longing—a way to create memory from the fragments and records of the absent object.

Background right:
Beatriz Cortez, Gift of the Artist to the Ancient Object Labeled as Human Head Emerging from Monster Jaws, One Migrant to Another, in Memory of Your True name and Your Land, 2022-23, Steel. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. 3D print courtesy of Williams College Museum of Art.

Beatriz Cortez’s Gift of the Artist to the Ancient Object Labeled as Human Head Emerging from Monster Jaws, One Migrant to Another, in Memory of Your True Name and Your Land was on display at Williams College in 2023. The work engages with the sacred nature and cultural content of a spectacular looted tenon, obtained by Williams students during an expedition to Honduras and Belize in 1970–71, as part of the Lyceum of Natural History. It speaks to the forced migration of ancient objects and imagines a way to honor this object by removing it from a cabinet of artifacts and placing it on a structure that gestures toward ancient forms and abstraction. This work engages with the idea that ancient objects hold cultural and spiritual value for contemporary Maya communities, both in their places of origin and in the diaspora. On top of the sculpture, a 3-D print of the ancient object held at the Williams College Museum of Art is displayed, further marking its absence, as the original ancient stone was not allowed to travel to New York for this exhibition.