Pedro Lasch
Encyclopedia
Pedro Lasch is a visual artist born in Mexico City, and based in the U.S. since 1994. He produces works of conceptual art
, institutional critique
, social practice
, and site-specific art
, as well as paintings, photographs, prints, and works in traditional media. He has been regularly involved with the New York art and politics collective 16 Beaver Group since 2000. He studied art at the Cooper Union
with Dore Ashton, Hans Haacke
, Day Gleeson, and Doug Ashford (Group Material), among others, and later completed an MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London.
He has been at Duke University
since 2002, where he teaches art and art theory in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, is graduate faculty for the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, and was a fellow at the Franklin Humanities Institute
. During these years at Duke, Lasch’s work has developed in an intellectual environment that includes influential figures from the List of Duke University people in critical theory such as Fredric Jameson
, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Anthony Neal
. His co-publications and direct artistic collaborations with colleagues there include projects with Esther Gabara, Walter Mignolo
, Michael Hardt
, Kristine Stiles
, and Ariel Dorfman
, as well as the staff of the Nasher Museum of Art
, which opened to the public in 2005 in a new building designed by Rafael Viñoly
.
Lasch’s work, like that of many other artists who make participatory art
, actively engages with pedagogy. His art has intersected with the international immigrants’ movement, and the philosophies of critical pedagogy
, radical democracy
, and the coloniality of power
. Between 1999 and 2004, Lasch created a series of simultaneously local and transnational social projects with immigrant and indigenous groups in Chiapas and Quintana Roo (Mexico), and Jackson Heights (Queens, New York). In collaboration with grassroots organizations like Asociación Tepeyac de New York and Mexicanos Unidos de Queens, Lasch founded and directed the experimental afterschool program Art, Story-Telling, and the Five Senses (El arte, el cuento y los cinco sentidos, in Spanish). This pedagogical work received consecutive years of support from artist Robert Motherwell
’s Dedalus Foundation, and it included noted guest participants such as Ricardo Dominguez
from Electronic Disturbance Theater
. During the peak of the 2006 United States immigration reform protests
, three of the projects begun in Queens (Naturalizations, LATINO/A AMERICA, and Tianguis Transnacional) were presented in Lasch’s first major solo exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York. This show was named as the best of the year by Michael Rakowitz
in the journal Artforum
. The museum and its immediate neighborhoods have since become increasingly recognized for their rich and globally significant immigrant culture, featured in popular films like Maria Full of Grace
, Salma Hayek
’s hit TV-series Ugly Betty
, and most recently, Tania Bruguera
’s Creative Time
IM International project.
Lasch’s productions from the early Queens period, as well as his work with 16 Beaver, have expanded over the years to engage a growing network of international grassroots and interdisciplinary collaborators. His projects with official art institutions include shows at Sean Kelly Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art
, Queens Museum of Art
, Walker Art Center
, MASS MoCA, Nasher Museum of Art
, MoMA PS1 (U.S.A), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
and The Royal College of Art (U.K.), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
(Spain), Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico), Singapore Art Museum
(Singapore), Gwangju Biennale
(South Korea), as well as the AND AND AND platform of documenta
13 (Germany).
Lasch has also served on various public and private boards, including the North Carolina Arts Council (2007-2010), and he occasionally curates exhibitions of other artists’ work that complement his artistic production. Flesh & Metal, Bodies & Buildings: Works from Jonathan Hyman's Archive of 9/11 Vernacular Memorials, is a curatorial project by Lasch, related to his own 9/11 memorial painting series entitled Phantom Limbs, as well as his work with the organization of Twin Towers Go Global.
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, institutional critique
Institutional Critique
Institutional Critique is an art term that describes the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, for instance galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists such as Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson and Hans...
, social practice
Social Practice
The Social Practice Model sees literacy as a key dimension of community regeneration and a part of the wider lifelong learning agenda. Such an approach recognises that:*literacy and numeracy are complex capabilities rather than a simple set of basic skills...
, and site-specific art
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
, as well as paintings, photographs, prints, and works in traditional media. He has been regularly involved with the New York art and politics collective 16 Beaver Group since 2000. He studied art at the Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
with Dore Ashton, Hans Haacke
Hans Haacke
Hans Haacke is a German-American artist who lives and works in New York.- Early life :Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the Staatliche Werkakademie in Kassel, Germany, from 1956 to 1960. He was a student of Stanley William Hayter, a well-known and influential English printmaker,...
, Day Gleeson, and Doug Ashford (Group Material), among others, and later completed an MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London.
He has been at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
since 2002, where he teaches art and art theory in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, is graduate faculty for the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, and was a fellow at the Franklin Humanities Institute
Franklin Humanities Institute
The Franklin Humanities Institute is an interdisciplinary humanities center house within the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University dedicated to supporting humanities, arts, and social science research and teaching. The institute's mission is to encourage humanistic inquiry throughout Duke...
. During these years at Duke, Lasch’s work has developed in an intellectual environment that includes influential figures from the List of Duke University people in critical theory such as Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Anthony Neal
Mark Anthony Neal
Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University, where he won the 2010 Robert B. Cox Award for Teaching...
. His co-publications and direct artistic collaborations with colleagues there include projects with Esther Gabara, Walter Mignolo
Walter Mignolo
Walter D. Mignolo is an Argentine semiotician and professor at Duke University, who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, made up over a dozen new words, and worked on different aspects of the modern and colonial world, exploring concepts such as global coloniality, the...
, Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...
, Kristine Stiles
Kristine Stiles
Kristine Stilesis an art historian specializing in global contemporary art. She has written extensively on performance art as well as on the themes of destruction, violence, and trauma in art. Stiles earned a B.A. in Art History from San Jose State University in California, and an M.A. and Ph.D...
, and Ariel Dorfman
Ariel Dorfman
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.-Personal...
, as well as the staff of the Nasher Museum of Art
Nasher Museum of Art
The Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and opened on October 2, 2005...
, which opened to the public in 2005 in a new building designed by Rafael Viñoly
Rafael Viñoly
Rafael Viñoly is an Uruguayan architect living in the United States.-Biography:He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay to Román Viñoly Barreto, and Maria Beceiro ....
.
Lasch’s work, like that of many other artists who make participatory art
Participatory Art
Participatory art is an approach to making art in which the audience is engaged directly in the creative process, allowing them to become co-authors, editors, and observers of the work...
, actively engages with pedagogy. His art has intersected with the international immigrants’ movement, and the philosophies of critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...
, radical democracy
Radical democracy
Radical democracy as an ideology was articulated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, written in 1985. They argue that social movements which attempt to create social and political change need a strategy which...
, and the coloniality of power
Coloniality of power
The Coloniality of Power is a theory of interrelation of the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge, advanced in postcolonial studies and Latin American subaltern studies, most prominently by Anibal Quijano...
. Between 1999 and 2004, Lasch created a series of simultaneously local and transnational social projects with immigrant and indigenous groups in Chiapas and Quintana Roo (Mexico), and Jackson Heights (Queens, New York). In collaboration with grassroots organizations like Asociación Tepeyac de New York and Mexicanos Unidos de Queens, Lasch founded and directed the experimental afterschool program Art, Story-Telling, and the Five Senses (El arte, el cuento y los cinco sentidos, in Spanish). This pedagogical work received consecutive years of support from artist Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
’s Dedalus Foundation, and it included noted guest participants such as Ricardo Dominguez
Ricardo Dominguez
Ricardo Dominguez is a Mexican professional boxer in the Light Welterweight division. He is best known for having won the 2009 Campeón Azteca tournament at Lightweight.-Pro career:...
from Electronic Disturbance Theater
Electronic Disturbance Theater
Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Stefan Wray, and Carmin Karasic are collectively known as The Electronic Disturbance Theater or EDT for short. Taking the idea of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the EDT members always used their real names. They never concealed their identities...
. During the peak of the 2006 United States immigration reform protests
2006 United States immigration reform protests
In 2006, millions of people participated in protests over a proposed change to U.S. immigration policy. The protests began in response to proposed legislation known as H.R. 4437, which would raise penalties for Illegal immigration and classify illegal immigrants and anyone who helped them enter or...
, three of the projects begun in Queens (Naturalizations, LATINO/A AMERICA, and Tianguis Transnacional) were presented in Lasch’s first major solo exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York. This show was named as the best of the year by Michael Rakowitz
Michael Rakowitz
Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi American Artist, best known for his conceptual art displayed in non-gallery contexts. He is an associate professor at Northwestern University.-References:...
in the journal Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
. The museum and its immediate neighborhoods have since become increasingly recognized for their rich and globally significant immigrant culture, featured in popular films like Maria Full of Grace
Maria Full of Grace
Maria Full of Grace is a 2004 joint Colombian-American film, written and directed by Joshua Marston, who won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. Although the movie depicts rural life in Colombia, it was actually filmed in Ecuador...
, Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek
Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault is a Mexican film actress, director and producer. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Frida Kahlo in the film Frida.-Early life:...
’s hit TV-series Ugly Betty
Ugly Betty
Ugly Betty is an American comedy-drama television series developed by Silvio Horta, which premiered on ABC on September 28, 2006, and ended on April 14, 2010. The series revolves around the character Betty Suarez and is based on Fernando Gaitán's Colombian telenovela soap opera Yo soy Betty, la fea...
, and most recently, Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera is a Cuban installation and performance artist, trained at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bruguera's work pivots around issues of power and control....
’s Creative Time
Creative Time
Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1973 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged works in the public realm, especially in vacant spaces of historical and architectural interest...
IM International project.
Lasch’s productions from the early Queens period, as well as his work with 16 Beaver, have expanded over the years to engage a growing network of international grassroots and interdisciplinary collaborators. His projects with official art institutions include shows at Sean Kelly Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
, Queens Museum of Art
Queens Museum of Art
The Queens Museum of Art is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States.-Overview:...
, Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, MASS MoCA, Nasher Museum of Art
Nasher Museum of Art
The Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and opened on October 2, 2005...
, MoMA PS1 (U.S.A), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art is an international centre for contemporary art located on the south bank of the River Tyne alongside the Gateshead Millennium Bridge in Gateshead, North East England, United Kingdom...
and The Royal College of Art (U.K.), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art . The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain...
(Spain), Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico), Singapore Art Museum
Singapore Art Museum
The Singapore Art Museum contains the national art collection of Singapore. It has a collection of 7,750 pieces of Singaporean and Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art, and has an expanding collection of new Asian and international contemporary art.- History :Officially opened in 1996, it...
(Singapore), Gwangju Biennale
Gwangju Biennale
The Gwangju Biennale, which started in September 1995 in the city of Gwangju in the South Jeolla province of South Korea, was Asia's first contemporary art biennale. The purpose of Gwangju Biennale is globalization of art and it respect diversity rather than uniformity...
(South Korea), as well as the AND AND AND platform of documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
13 (Germany).
Lasch has also served on various public and private boards, including the North Carolina Arts Council (2007-2010), and he occasionally curates exhibitions of other artists’ work that complement his artistic production. Flesh & Metal, Bodies & Buildings: Works from Jonathan Hyman's Archive of 9/11 Vernacular Memorials, is a curatorial project by Lasch, related to his own 9/11 memorial painting series entitled Phantom Limbs, as well as his work with the organization of Twin Towers Go Global.
Books and Articles
- 2010
- P. Lasch with S. Aravamudan, J. Gonzalez, A. Maillet, W. Mignolo, & P. Sigal, Black Mirror/Espejo Negro, Franklin Humanities Institute & Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Duke University Press: Fall 2010.
- P. Lasch and others, Un Atlas de Cartografías Radicales, edited by Lize Mogel & Alexis Bhagat (November, 2010) (First Spanish edition of the 2007 'An Atlas of Radical Cartography.' Prologue to the Spanish edition: Javier Arbona, Nick Sowers and Bryan Finoki.)
- P. Lasch & Miguel Rojas Sotelo, Separata Decolonial, Revista Calle 14: Arte y Decolonialidad, vol. 4 no. 5 (2010), Bogota, Colombia.
- P. Lasch (and 16 Beaver Group), Free Association/Means in Common, edited by Anna Curcio and Ceren Ozselcuk, Rethinking Marxism, Special Issue: The Commons and the Forms of the Commune, vol. 22 no. 3 (July, 2010)
- P. Lasch and others, Greater New York (Exhibition Catalogue), edited by New York: PS1 MoMA (May, 2010).
- P. Lasch and others, Arte y estética en la encrucijada descolonial, edited by Eds. Walter Mignolo, Zulma Palermo, El desprendimiento: pensamiento crítico y opción descolonial no. 6 (2010 Spring), pp. cover & p2, Argentina: Editorial Signo & Durham: Globalization and the Humanities Project, Duke University.
- P. Lasch, University, Narcochingadazo, and Hemispheric Non-Cooperation, edited by Jill Lane and Marcial Godoy-Anativia, e-misférica, vol. 6 no. 2 (2010 February), New York University: Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.
- 2009
- With 16 Beaver Group, “C.A.R.T.E.L.” Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor, and Economics. Eds. Temporary Services, Special Issue Publication and Website, Fall 2009
- P. Lasch and others, La teoría política en la encrucijada descolonial, edited by Eds. Walter Mignolo, Sylvia Wynter, Lewis Ricardo Gordon, Alejandro de Oto, El desprendimiento: pensamiento crítico y opción descolonial no. 5 (2009 Fall), pp. cover & p2, Argentina: Editorial Signo and GlobalArgentina: Editorial Signo & Durham: Globalization and the Humanities Project, Duke University
- “Tanta Cerca Tan Cerquita,” Catalog for Transitio 2007: International Festival of Electronic Arts & Transnational Communities. Eds. Grace Quintanilla & Mariana Delgado. Mexico City: Centro Nacional de las Artes (Spring 2009)
- 2008
- "LATINO/A AMERICA." Genero y Descolonialidad: El desprendimiento: pensamiento crítico y opción descolonial (Cuaderno #4). Eds. Walter Mignolo, Maria Lugones, Isabel jiménez-Lucena and Madina Tlostanova. (Fall, 2008), cover & p2
- “Tianguis Transnacional: Drifting and Indigenous Migrancy,” What Keeps Mankind Alive? and Continental Drift. Eds. Brian Holmes, 16Beaver Group, & What, How, for Whom / WHW: Ivet Curlin, Ana Devic, Natasa Ilic, Sabina Sabolovic. Zagreb: WHW Newspapers, Issue #15, (2008): 20-21
- “LATINO/A AMERICA,” El color de la razón: racismo epistemológico y razón imperial: El desprendimiento: pensamiento crítico y opción descolonial (Cauderno #3). Eds. Walter Mignolo, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Paget Henry, Santiago Castro-Gómez. Argentina: Editorial Signo and Globalization and Durham: The Humanities Project, Duke University, (2008): cover & p2.
- With 16Beaver Group, “Iraq Questionnaire Answers,” October Magazine, MIT Press, Winter 2008, No. 123, Pages 149-160.
- “666666: DUN LAOGHAIRE (36 signs and a Panorama),” Carlisle Pier. Edited Cliodhna Shaffrey. Dublin: The Arts Council of Ireland and the Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company, (2008).
- 2007 and before
- “LATINO/A AMERICA,” An Atlas of Radical Cartography. Eds. Lize Mogel & Alexis Bhagat. Los Angeles: Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, (2007): 77-80.
- “LATINO/A AMERICA,” Interculturalidad, descolonización del estado y del conocimiento, El desprendimiento: pensamiento crítico y opción descolonial (Cauderno #2). Eds. Walter Mignolo, Catherine Walsh, Alvaro García Linera. Argentina: Editorial Signo and Globalization and Durham: The Humanities Project, Duke University, (2006): cover & p2.
- “Justice for Three Voices: Two Real, One Imaginary,” Journal BOL, Issue #4. Editor: Kyunghwa Ahn. Seoul, Republic of Korea, (2006): 212-234.
- With 16Beaver Group, “Map of New ORDER Lines” Journal BOL, Issue #4. Editor: Kyunghwa Ahn. Seoul, Republic of Korea, (2006):
- With 16Beaver Group, “Between US: Exhibition Notes and Documentation” Fever Variations: Gwangju Biennale 2006 Catalogue, Vol. II. Editor, Hong-hee Kim. Gwangju Biennale Foundation. (2006): 168-169.
- With 16Beaver Group, “Between US: Introduction,” Fever Variations: Gwangju Biennale 2006 Catalogue, Vol. I. Editor, Hong-hee Kim. Gwangju Biennale Foundation. (2006): 281-295.
- “LATINO/A AMERICA”. (Des)Colonialidad del ser y el saber, El desprendimiento: pensamiento crítico y opción descolonial (Cauderno #1). Eds. Walter Mignolo, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Freya Schiwy. Argentina: Editorial Signo and Globalization and Durham: The Humanities Project, Duke University, (2006): cover & p2.
- “Una Propuesta Escultórica,” Saber Ver (Segunda Época) 5:34 (2005) 38-39.
- With 16Beaver Group, Act Patriot Act, The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore (2005). Special publication in relation to the exhibition Patriot.
- “Naturalizations: Media Defacements,” Rethinking Marxism 16:4 (2004): 486-487, as well as distributed throughout journal.
- With 16Beaver Group, “An Open Interview and Lunch,” FUSE Magazine, special issue “Democracies Improvised,” 26: 2 (2003):12-13, as well as Special Addendum.
- “La Mesa de Juego de Mendeleiev,” Ciencias 65. Mexico City: U.N.A.M. (2002): 76.
- “Un Arte que Nace, Crece, y si no se Reproduce… Muere,” Longevidad: Ciencia y Cultura (Jan-Mar 2000): 108-116.
- “El Pincel Eléctrico y el Cuadro de Plata,” Ciencias 59. Mexico City: U.N.A.M. (2000): 76-77.
- “Ciencia y Circo,” Ciencias 57. Mexico City: U.N.A.M. (2000): 68-74.
- “Una Propuesta Escultórica para el Zócalo,” Curare: Espacio Crítico para las Artes 15 (1999): 89-95.