Recuérdame: Justin Favela at Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling
I’ve been working with Sugar Hill Children’s Museum as a guest curator for the last year or so. The first exhibition I organized for the Museum was for Las Vegas-based artist Justin Favela’s first solo exhibition in New York. We titled the show Recuérdame, which means “Remember Me” in Spanish.
Photo: Michael Palma Mir
The exhibition was a celebration of Mexican history and culture through the lens of landscape. Favela’s murals take visitors on a phantasmagoric adventure, rending the Mexican landscape in piñata-cut tissue paper. From the imagery found in Jose Maria Velasco’s expansive 19th-century canvases, to Walt Disney’s 1944 live-action animation film The Three Caballeros and 2017 Pixar animated film Coco, Favela covered over 1,000 square feet of the Museum in a full array of chromatic hues. The result was a larger-than-life immersive environment that recalled some of Favela’s memories of driving through Mexico’s countryside during his visits as a child, as well as contemporary cinematic references that were created for both Latin-American and non-Latin-American audiences to celebrate and exoticize Mexican culture.
Like all exhibitions at the Museum, Justin’s show was accompanied by a host of storytelling programs and artmaking activities inspired by his use of materials, a celebration of Mexican culture and the delight affiliated with piñatas.
This exhibition was on view at the Museum from October 17, 2018 - September 29, 2019.
About Justin Favela
Justin Favela is a Las Vegas native with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts from UNLV who works in the mediums of painting, sculpture, and performance. His work draws from art history, popular culture and his Guatemalan/Mexican heritage. He has participated in exhibitions and been awarded artists residencies across the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Recent exhibitions of note include Unsettled at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno; Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place, at the Denver Art Museum, and the group exhibition Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness touring the United Kingdom through 2018. His installation at Sugar Hill will be the artist’s New York City debut. Favela is also the co-creator of the podcast Latinos Who Lunch. Justin Favela is also the 2018 recipient of the Alan Turing LGTBIQ Award for International Artist.