Emilio Rojas
Emilio Rojas (Mexico City, ca.1985) is an artist, working primarily in performance, film, video, photography, installation, drawings and sculpture. Rojas utilizes his body in a political & critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration and poetics of space. His works have been exhibited in US, Mexico, Canada, Austria, England, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia. He has attended numerous residencies including the Banff Centre, Elsewhere Museum, the Botin Foundation, the STAG, and the Hammock Residency. Rojas also participated at the 54th Venice Biennale as part of the Pirate Camp: Stateless Pavilion. He has shown extensively in Vancouver at VIVO, 221A, Grunt Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, Western Front, Audain Gallery, Access, Gallery Gachet, and Live Biennale. Rojas is also a member of the A.K.A. Collective, which previously showed at Back Gallery Project with the Exhibition Diffractions of the Local. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr in Integrated Media and his work is represented by Galeria Jose de La Fuente in Spain.
One Night Stand
The exhibition "One Night Stand" will be screening two videos “El Retorno” and “The Grass is Always Greener and/or Twice Stolen Land”, accompanied by new drawings and stills related to these two pieces. “El Retorno” is a stop motion animation of 9,000 photographs, created while attending a residency at the Botin Foundation, lead by artist Tacita Dean. “The Grass is Always Greener” is a 25 hour durational performance, where the artist rolls stolen grass for 7 km. from UBC, to Musqueam Reserve.
Both works engage with the complicated histories of colonialism of each site, Spain and Vancouver, through embodied decolonial gestures, movement and repetition. The act of rolling his own body and the land , both which deteriorate and transform through the route become dynamic metaphors of the unfolding narratives of colonization, and displacement.
Both works engage with the complicated histories of colonialism of each site, Spain and Vancouver, through embodied decolonial gestures, movement and repetition. The act of rolling his own body and the land , both which deteriorate and transform through the route become dynamic metaphors of the unfolding narratives of colonization, and displacement.
