Patricia Villalobos
In conversation

Within the Program “Together Apart: Cohabiting Borders, session #7”, on Thursday, February 17, Patricia Villalobos Echeverria joined us in a meaningful lecture-dialogue with the fellows of the program. Patricia presented her work that revolves around the sense of the “normal”, the absurd and the subversive, altering / imploding them through sensory and perceptual experiences, presenting them with the complexity of seeing, feeling and hearing in different situations and contexts.

Patricia Villalobos Echeverría was born in the USA to Salvadoran parents, and she grew up in Managua, Nicaragua before moving back to the USA. She has a hybrid practice of prints, photos, video, installations and participatory projects that pivot around issues of migration, navigation, displacement and transformation. Her projects have been exhibited in North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. She is the recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Artist Grant, the Oregon Arts Council Fellowship, PA Council for the Arts Fellowship, Creative Heights Residency Fellowship from the Heinz Endowment and has been an artist in residence at Ox-Bow, Artist Image Resource, Proyecto´ace, The Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and the MacDowell Arts Colony.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My artwork pivots around issues of migration, navigation, displacement and transformation. Through a hybrid practice that encompasses print media, site-specific and participatory projects, I tap into our sense of memory, of being and of belonging within the divergent territories we inhabit –geographic, cultural, social, political– and the (in)stability therein. As an artist, I am interested in engaging various publics and contexts with works that encompass the perceptual, the sensorial and the experiential.