Yoshua Okón

  • November 5, 2013 7:00 PM

Yoshua Okón, artist featured in México Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990

Yoshua Okón is an artist born and raised in Mexico City. He traveled to Montreal and Los Angeles for his BFA and MFA degrees, then returned to Mexico and pursued what has been a successful international career with group and solo exhibitions spanning the globe, including, most recently, shows at the Hayward Gallery in London, Fundación Alumnos47 in Mexico City, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland. Two of Okón’s thought-provoking video installations are featured in the Modern’s exhibition México Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990, offering a glimpse into the artist’s diverse oeuvre that includes sculpture, performance, video, and installation. In his work, he addresses issues such as fear, violence, and identity as they apply to local experience, but with recognition of their shared universality across time and geographies.

In a conversation with two other artists from Inside Out and art historian Arden Decker, which was published in the exhibition catalogue, Okón explains, “I have a preoccupation with routines that are connected to my everyday life and in the way these very local issues connect to a global context. Whether I produce a piece in LA or in Munich or in Mexico City, I operate with the same approach.” He goes on to say, “One of the reasons I make art, and I think a lot of my fellow artists do, is because I want to talk about how complex the notion of identity is.”

Yoshua Okón shares his ideas and presents a selection of his video installations from the past 15 years for this special Tuesday Evenings artist talk.       

 

This popular series of lectures and presentations by artists, architects, historians, and critics is free and open to the public each Tuesday from September 10 through November 19. Lectures begin at 7 pm in the Museum’s auditorium. Seating begins at 6:30 pm and is limited to 250; a live broadcast of the presentations is shown in Café Modern for any additional guests. Free admission tickets (limit two) are available at the Modern’s information desk beginning at 5 pm on the day of the lecture. The Museum galleries remain open until 7 pm on Tuesday evenings during the series.

Café Modern serves cocktails, salads, and appetizers, as well as a fine dining menu, on Tuesday nights during the lecture series. Enjoy the Café Modern experience before or after the lecture; seating is available from 5 pm to 8:30 pm. For reservations, call 817.840.2157 or click here.

 

Yoshua Okón, Octopus, 2011. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.