Artist Talk: Adriana Corral in Conversation with Denise Markonish

In conjunction with our current exhibition IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY, artist Adriana Corral will be in conversation with special guest Denise Markonish, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. Join us for this discussion of Corral’s deeply researched, socially engaged artistic practice, which positions the audience to confront/re-examine often difficult, critical social and cultural issues of today, forming new understandings and perhaps even influencing social change.

Event Details:
The artist talk is FREE for all. Advanced registration is strongly encouraged. Arrive early and enjoy happy hour food and drink specials at Spread & Co. Grab a drink, a snack, or a full picnic and bring it with you to the performance.

The first 30 check-ins will receive a complimentary drink ticket, redeemable at our on-site café, Spread and Co.

The talk will take place in the amphitheater along Lake Austin on the grounds of Laguna Gloria. Dress for the weather and expect uneven ground. In case of rain, the talk will take place in the Villa.

About the Speakers:

Adriana Corral’s interdisciplinary, research-based practice boldly explores memory, loss, human rights abuses, and unacknowledged histories. Often working across international borders, she mines state and national archives for primary documents and engages historians, anthropologists, journalists, gender scholars, human rights attorneys, and victims’ families for information that materialize in her performances, sculptures, and installations. These refined, contemplative works aim to facilitate the restitution of memory and to stand witness to the past in order to empower humane acts in the present and future. 

Corral received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and completed her BFA at the University of Texas at El Paso. She was invited to attend the 106th session of the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (2015) and awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2016). Corral attended the McDowell Residency (2014), Künstlerhaus Bethanien Residency in Berlin, Germany (2016); the International Artist-in-Residence at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas (2016); and an Artist-in-Residence at the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans, Louisiana (2018). Corral was an Artist Fellow at Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum (2017), an Artist Research Fellow at the Archives of American Art and History at the Smithsonian Institution (2018), and selected for the Latinx Artist Fellowship funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation (2021). Corral is the recipient of Houston’s Artadia Award (2019) as well as a grant from the Harpo Foundation (2020). Upcoming and recent exhibitions include: Blaffer Art Museum (2023); Eyes of the Skin, Lehmann Maupin Gallery (2022); Suffering from Realness, MASS MoCA (2019–2020); Bodies of Knowledge, New Orleans Museum of Art (2019); and Prospect 5, Yesterday we said tomorrow (2020–2022).

Denise Markonish is the chief curator at MASS MoCA. Her exhibitions include Marc Swanson: A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco (also at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY); Lily Cox-Richard: Weep Holes; Amy Hauft: Terra Luna + Sol; Glenn Kaino: In the Light of a Shadow: Suffering from Realness; Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass; Nick Cave: Until; Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder; Teresita Fernández: As Above So Below; Oh, Canada; Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum; These Days: Elegies for Modern Times; and Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. She edited the books Teresita Fernández: Wayfinding (DelMonico/Prestel) and Wonder: 50 Years of RISD Glass, and co-edited Sol LeWitt: 100 Views (Yale University Press). Markonish has taught at Williams College and the Rhode Island School of Design, was a visiting curator at Artpace, San Antonio, and Haystack School of Craft, Deer Isle, Maine. She is currently working on projects with Joseph Grigely, Jeffrey Gibson, and Vincent Valdez.