Cristina Garrido

Roots and labels. A Traveling Geography

February 19th - March 27th, 2022

Cristina Garrido
Roots and Labels. A Traveling Geography
February 19th - March 27th, 2022

Cristina Garrido’s new series Local Colour is a Foreign Invention (USA Regions) delves into issues of identity, globalization, nationalism and colonialism. The title inverts Jorge Luis Borges’ “Is there local color of a place,” to ask if “local color” is created by our intrinsic expectations of the landscape. Garrido collected 466 examples of sky paintings from different American artists practicing between 1758 to 1998. She divided the works into geographical regions; West, Midwest, South and Northeast. The size of each piece was determined by the number of times she came across depictions of specific regions. This structure raised comparisons not only in the stylistic representation of specific areas but also the colonization of the United States. 

In the series In English, Demonyms are Capitalised, Garrido further investigates the intersection of art and geopolitics. Garrido asks if identity labels in a global art world are more helpful to understand an artist's practice or more of a marketing hindrance to the interpretation of their work. In Roots, Garrido inserts herself into the dialogue. Using changes in her own body she addresses her own sense of identity, belonging to place and a possible exit from these constructed categories of representation.

Cristina Garrido (b. 1986 Madrid, Spain) studied Fine Art at the Complutense University of Madrid, Camberwell College of Arts and  received her MA in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art, 2011. She has been awarded a Fundacio “la Caixa” Grant (2011), Generación 2015 Proyectos de Arte Fundación Montemadrid (2015),  the Fundación Botín Visual Arts Grant (2017-2018) and the ARCO Award for young artists (2018). She currently works and lives in Madrid, Spain.