BIO
Alma Rayén Molina Carvajal (Chile, 1984) is an art engagement specialist, cultural manager, visual artist, and mother of two kids. With formal studies in Art Theory, Art History, and Education, as well as being a self-taught individual, Alma has developed art mediation practices that link artists, artworks, and cultural institutions with communities and people.
In recent years, Alma has started working on visual art pieces, inspired by feminist artists and feminist spaces, developing a “right here, right now” aesthetic. Using non-academic language, she documents daily routines and everyday life using tools that she has at hand, such as cell phone pictures, videos, audio recordings, scribbles, quick notes over notebooks, improv dances, and small performances. In the end, these are mixed up into digital collages and videos.
Since 2021, Alma has been living in Charlottesville, VA. She was a part of the New City Arts Initiative Fellowship, where she exhibited “Astronaut_Mom” in April 2022. Additionally, since September 2022, Alma has been working as a member of the artist team for the augmented reality art project “Unsettling Grounds,” which is set to be released in July 2023. She has also collaborated on collages for the artzine “Mala Leche.”
Statement
I have partnered with artists and communities as an art engagement specialist, manager, educator, and curator for many years. Throughout this time, I have learned and tested different approaches to art investigation and connecting artists, artworks, and people. From there, I began experimenting with the idea of art engagement as a practice that can be considered creation itself. Thanks to the feminist art conceptual framework, I could experiment with my own non-academic visual language as a way to reflect on personal issues that take hold in social problems.
As a result, I have begun work driven by a strong sense of urgency and emergency that I have carried all my life, but which took on a new form and importance when I became a mother. This impulse has driven me to document daily routines and everyday life using tools that I had on hand, such as cell phone pictures, videos, audio recordings, scribbles, quick notes over notebooks, improv dances, and small performances. In the end, I mixed everything into digital collages edited in the same non-expert way, which I call a “right here, right now” aesthetic.
In that sense, my work has been triggered by my maternity, not only as a thematic subject, but also as visual research that assumes and shows my personal material conditions. For instance, the lack of exclusive time and space to work and create in simultaneity with the endless caregiving tasks of a housewife and mother of two.
Since 2021, I have been living as a migrant in the United States, which has opened a space of self-reflection around identities and belongings that are starting to permeate my research. Additionally, I have started using Artificial Intelligence images and video tools adding an external eye and dimension to my work.
Licenciada en Artes con mención en Teoría e Historia del Arte de la Universidad de Chile, egresada del Magister en Educación de la Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (Santiago, Chile).
Mediadora artística, gestora cultural y artista visual. Como mediadora artística trabajó en distintos museos y organizaciones culturales, creando y gestionando los programas del Área de Públicos del Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende. El año 2015 se traslada a la ciudad de La Serena, Coquimbo donde trabajó como consultora para la Seremi de Cultura de la Región de Coquimbo en temás de mediación y educación artística. También durante ese periodo creó y gestionó proyectos culturales para el Colectivo de Danza la Manada, y junto a Alejandra Ugarte creó el colectivo Maldita Precaria.
A partir del año 2020 comienza a desarrollar proyectos y obras visuales utilizando recursos digitales y análogos simples. El año 2021 se traslada a la ciudad de Charlottesville, Virginia, Estados Unidos, donde colabora con galerías y espacios culturales locales mientras sigue desarrollando su trabajo visual.
Contact
almarayenwork@gmail.com
