Organization of American States
Secretariat for Hemispheric Affairs
AMA | Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street NW
Washington DC 20006

ON VIEW 
November 15, 2018 – January 27, 2019

OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, November 15 6-8PM
RSVP here

HOURS 
Tuesday-Sunday 10AM-5PM

LOCATION
Organization of American States
Secretariat for Hemispheric Affairs
AMA | Art Museum of the Americas
201 18th Street NW
Washington, DC 20006

ADMISSION
Free

The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas and the Permanent Mission of Peru to the OAS announce the opening of “Amazogramas,” an exhibition of the Peruvian artist’s large-scale photo-based installations, curated by Alejandro Castellote. Just over two years ago, he began a project that took him to Bahuaha Sonene, a national park in the Amazon jungle at southeastern Peru. Throughout the first year, Huarcaya made several trips in which he found it impossible to “depict” the vast web of emotions that the Peruvian jungle inspired. To solve the dilemmas he faced, Huarcaya chose to discard the sophisticated cameras he had used on his initial journeys. Instead, he chose to go back 175 years, and recover one of the first procedures used in photography: the photogram. The photogram is a technique that, without a lens or a camera, allowed for accurate reproductions of objects. Huarcaya’s solution to the difficulties of representation that paralyzed him was admitting the landscape´s superiority: to stop being an author – a monolithic authority – and become a mediator.

The expedition undertaken by Huarcaya probably had his own interior search as a destination; and it was that relationship between experience and introspection that gave him access to different and more effective solutions. In any process that we use to obtain answers, time is a galvanizing and protean element. A beautiful metaphor of that process is found in photographic paper, which slowly shows its latent image – it reveals its answer – within a developer’s container. The examples, metaphors and allegories provide us with images that help us to understand the world in its most minuscule or anecdotic dimensions, as well as its metaphysical ones.

Roberto Huarcaya was born in Lima in 1959. He obtained a degree in Psychology at the Universidad Católica del Perú (Lima, 1978-1984), and studied cinema at the Instituto Italiano de Cultura (Lima, 1982) and Photography at the Centro del Video y la Imagen (Madrid, 1989), and taught Photography at the Universidad de Lima (1990-1993), at the Gaudi Institute (Lima, 1993-1997) and at the Centro de la Fotografía, now Centro de la Imagen (Lima, since 1999) of which he is the founder and director. He has held solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in Lima, Buenos Aires, London, Sao Paulo, Lisbon, and other cities throughout Latin America and Europe.

Alejandro Castellote was born in Madrid in 1959, and began working as photography curator in 1982. From 1985 until 1996 he was director of the Photography Department at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid) where he organized five editions of the Festival FOCO. In 1987, he created the Minerva Photography Gallery at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, a space devoted to emerging photographers. He has been artistic director and founder of the International Photography Festival PhotoEspaña in Madrid from 1998 to 2000. During 2005 and 2006 he was a content adviser for C International Photo Magazine in London, and curated the exhibition C on Cities for the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006. In 2012 was guest curator of the Singapore International Photography Festival and curated at MAPFRE Foundation (2013) the exhibition and book Spain throughout Photography. 1839-2010. In 2014, he was the curator of the DAEGU Photo Biennale in South Korea and in 2015 co-curator of the First Chang Jiang International Photography & Video Biennale, in Chongqing, China. In 2006 he was awarded with the Prize Bartolomé Ros for the best professional track record in photography in Spain. Since 2014 he has lived in Peru where is the director of the Latin American Master of Photography and Visual Arts at the Centro de la Imagen of Lima.

The AMA serves as the principal instrument of cultural diplomacy of the OAS. AMA’s mission is founded on the notion that the arts are transformative for individuals and communities. This guiding principle promotes the core values of the OAS by providing a space for cultural expression, creativity, innovation, dialog, and learning, while highlighting themes such as democracy, development, human rights, justice, freedom of expression, and innovation. AMA’s work draws on contemporary art to showcase a constructive vision of the future of the Americas via local and hemispheric cultural exchange.

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Permanent Mission of Peru to the OAS and the FAMA | Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas.

Accessibility: AMA’s first floor is wheelchair accessible by appointment, with a ramp that can be installed at the back entrance to the museum. There is a gravel pathway leading to the back entrance. There is one half-step leading from the first room into the first-floor galleries. There is a flight of winding stairs leading to the museum’s second floor. Restrooms are located on the second floor. For more information on accessibility, or to make an appointment to visit, please contact 202 370 0147 or artmus@oas.org

For more information on AMA, please visit AMAmuseum.org