Expedition to Mundos Alternos-Alien Skins-NYC

view towards mid Manhattan from the hotel we stayed at in Astoria area in Queens

In the recent year or so there has been an influx of San Antonio based artists visiting and exhibiting in New York City. Patricia Ruiz-Healy Art from San Antonio has opened up a gallery with the inaugural exhibition "Cecilia Paredes and Chuck Ramirez: Photographing Identities" at their New York gallery space. Also happening is the exhibit "Collective Consciousness " from The All Things Project 269 Bleeker Street, New York organized by The Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community by Rex Hausmann | Curated by Adam Tyson & Nozomi Kato Opening: June 1, 7-10. This also includes the literary and performance arts where poets like Amanda Flores and Ariana Brown are making an impact and being recognized.

May 7th 2019 marked the performance evening for the Mundos Alternos-Alien Skins exhibit at the Leslie-Lohman Gay and Lesbian Museum in SOHO NYC. The evening performance is part of another of the Mundos Alternos exhibit from the Pacific Standard Time LA/LA exhibit that is traveling and showing concurrently at the Queens Museum – "Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas brings together contemporary artists from across the Americas who have tapped into science fiction’s capacity to imagine new realities, both utopian and dystopian." My work and the work of San Antonio based Project:MASA artists L.A. Vatocosmico, Raul Servin and Deborah Kuetzpal Vasquez. San Antonio artist Claudio Dicochea was included in the exhibit as well as Austin based artist Hector Hernandez. That evening Carmelita Tropicana spoke and and led the audience around the exhibit during her performance presentation.

Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas. Is a wide-ranging survey exhibition, it brings together contemporary artists from across the Americas who have tapped into science fiction’s capacity to imagine new realities, both utopian and dystopian. Science fiction offers a unique artistic landscape in which to explore the colonial enterprise that shaped the Americas and to present alternative perspectives speculating on the past and the future. In the works featured in the exhibition, most created in the last two decades, artists employ the imagery of science fiction to suggest diverse modes of existence and represent “alienating” ways of being in the world. Drawing on UCR’s strong faculty and collections in science fiction, the exhibition offers a groundbreaking account of the intersections among science fiction, techno-culture, and the visual arts.

The largest part of the traveling Mundos Alternos exhibit is on view at the Queens Museum until August 15th 2019. If you are going to visit the area I would recommend staying in Astoria in Queens and both museums are within a 15 minute subway ride as well as mid Manhattan area.