ANIMALES FAMILIARES

Johansson Projects presents Animales Familiares, a solo exhibition of new works by Miguel Arzabe. Red pumas, shark whales, and flamingos are among the animals populating Arzabe’s second solo presentation at the gallery.  Emerging from the abstracted surfaces of his painting-weavings, Arzabe’s creatures form a contemporary bestiary that expands on a genre that spans European Middle Age illustrated books to the watercolors of Mexican modernist Francisco Toledo. Yet, whereas such artistic predecessors reflect imagined mythological beasts, Arzabe presents more familiar specimens, as declared by the title of one of the show’s anchoring pieces. READ MORE

On Saturday, October 7 @ 3pm, Arzabe will sit with fellow Bay Area artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernández to discuss this body of work, art-making in the Bay Area, and their shared experiences as artists of Bolivian descent in the United States. Aranibar-Fernández, born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia, is an multi-disciplinary artist, educator and Director of Galleries and Public Programs at the San Francisco Arts Commission. Aranibar-Fernandez’s recent work has been exhibited at the National Museum of Art in Bolivia, in the border fence of MX/US, in New York, Los Angeles, Arizona, Qatar, and in Nepal. Carolina received an M.F.A from Virginia Commonwealth University and a B.F.A from the Kansas City Art Institute. She was the 2020-2021 Race, Arts and Democracy Fellow at Center for Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University; the 2019 – 2020 Binational Arts resident in Arizona (US) and Sonora (MX); the recipient of the 2018-2019 Projecting All Voices Fellowship at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University; and received the 2016-2017 Fellowship at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar.

The talk will be in-person at Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland.