Andrés Mario de Varona + Cristóbal Ascencio
Contact + Las flores mueren dos veces
Dates + Events
Opening Reception + Artist Talk: Andrés Mario De Varona + Cristobal Ascencio
Friday, February 2 | 5:00pm - 8:00pm
February Pictura Kids: Shadow Puppets
Saturday, February 3 | 11:00am - 12:00pm
March Pictura Kids: Cristobal Ascencio
Saturday, March 2 | 11:00am - 12:00pm
Andrés Mario de Varona + Cristóbal Ascencio
Contact + Las flores mueren dos veces
The upcoming exhibition at Pictura explores the complex relationship of a child to a deceased parent. The show features two different projects, Contact by Andrés Mario de Varona, and Las flores mueren dos veces by Cristobal Ascencio.
Both projects are built from the artist’s efforts to connect with the lost parent. Ascencio creates a haunting virtual garden, honoring his father’s vocation as a gardener. De Varona works with personal relics, family members, and the mysterious properties of light to reach back towards his mother.
Artist Bio
“I was born into two Cuban families and grew up in Miami as a first generation Cuban-American. The majority of my teenage years were spent running cross-country while attending high-school.
Being interested in images and writing, and pressured to take a more practical approach, I pursued a degree in journalism. However, I realized that I did not want to take pictures, but instead create them.
Little by little I learned to speak a language true to myself. The death of my mother helped me discover this, and it galvanized my need to know more about myself and what I am capable of expressing. After graduating, I moved to New Mexico. Since living in the desert, my obsession with death morphed into an obsession for life, and I became eager to learn what it truly means to connect with others.
I’ve had to ask myself why I am attracted to illness, and intensity. I believe my own sense of loss and unfairness has made me want to see other people who have experienced profound loss, or that are going through a painful change in themselves.
Art is my tool to measure cycles of indignation and of healing, our growth as human beings, and as a way to record victories. What I create is an attempt to enter the collective human experience, as well as an access point into myself.”
Contact | Artist Statement
I began creating rituals with my family after my mother’s death (2016), and used them to re-examine the significance of death as part of life in a series titled Contact. Photographing the rituals re-invited death into our home, and gave me time to live with it, as well as a time to reclaim the experience. The more I became familiar with this presence, the more I began questioning myself. The outcome was an exploration of grief and loss; getting intimate with death against a cultural context that often gets swept under the rug (even though it is one of life’s few hard guarantees). During this time, my family and I navigated into new transitioned roles and responsibilities. By creating healing spaces and ceremonies around these new responsibilities and roles, we began to confront the psychological and somatic shock that death delivers. In modern Western society death is something that’s become nearly invisible and that’s typically told to us rather than witnessed. Contact builds an inner connection to death by working alongside it and questioning the lengths we go to sanitize it.
Something that connected me to death for the first time was my mother’s nightgown. This article of clothing was something she purchased but never wore. In fact, I found it still wrapped up in the Macy’s bag it had come in. I discovered it one day when I went back to my mother’s home to visit after she had died. I wanted to search through her belongings and clothes, but was disappointed to find that all of her clothes were already donated. Immediately this gown became a relic for my sisters and I, and it became a motif throughout the series. To this day I keep it in my closet and continue to take it with me everywhere I go.
Andrés Mario de Varona + Cristóbal Ascencio
Contact + Las flores mueren dos veces
The upcoming exhibition at Pictura explores the complex relationship of a child to a deceased parent. The show features two different projects, Contact by Andrés Mario de Varona, and Las flores mueren dos veces by Cristobal Ascencio.
Both projects are built from the artist’s efforts to connect with the lost parent. Ascencio creates a haunting virtual garden, honoring his father’s vocation as a gardener. De Varona works with personal relics, family members, and the mysterious properties of light to reach back towards his mother.
Artist Bio
“I was born into two Cuban families and grew up in Miami as a first generation Cuban-American. The majority of my teenage years were spent running cross-country while attending high-school.
Being interested in images and writing, and pressured to take a more practical approach, I pursued a degree in journalism. However, I realized that I did not want to take pictures, but instead create them.
Little by little I learned to speak a language true to myself. The death of my mother helped me discover this, and it galvanized my need to know more about myself and what I am capable of expressing. After graduating, I moved to New Mexico. Since living in the desert, my obsession with death morphed into an obsession for life, and I became eager to learn what it truly means to connect with others.
I’ve had to ask myself why I am attracted to illness, and intensity. I believe my own sense of loss and unfairness has made me want to see other people who have experienced profound loss, or that are going through a painful change in themselves.
Art is my tool to measure cycles of indignation and of healing, our growth as human beings, and as a way to record victories. What I create is an attempt to enter the collective human experience, as well as an access point into myself.”
Contact | Artist Statement
I began creating rituals with my family after my mother’s death (2016), and used them to re-examine the significance of death as part of life in a series titled Contact. Photographing the rituals re-invited death into our home, and gave me time to live with it, as well as a time to reclaim the experience. The more I became familiar with this presence, the more I began questioning myself. The outcome was an exploration of grief and loss; getting intimate with death against a cultural context that often gets swept under the rug (even though it is one of life’s few hard guarantees). During this time, my family and I navigated into new transitioned roles and responsibilities. By creating healing spaces and ceremonies around these new responsibilities and roles, we began to confront the psychological and somatic shock that death delivers. In modern Western society death is something that’s become nearly invisible and that’s typically told to us rather than witnessed. Contact builds an inner connection to death by working alongside it and questioning the lengths we go to sanitize it.
Something that connected me to death for the first time was my mother’s nightgown. This article of clothing was something she purchased but never wore. In fact, I found it still wrapped up in the Macy’s bag it had come in. I discovered it one day when I went back to my mother’s home to visit after she had died. I wanted to search through her belongings and clothes, but was disappointed to find that all of her clothes were already donated. Immediately this gown became a relic for my sisters and I, and it became a motif throughout the series. To this day I keep it in my closet and continue to take it with me everywhere I go.
Dates + Events
Opening Reception + Artist Talk: Andrés Mario De Varona + Cristobal Ascencio
Friday, February 2 | 5:00pm - 8:00pm
February Pictura Kids: Shadow Puppets
Saturday, February 3 | 11:00am - 12:00pm
March Pictura Kids: Cristobal Ascencio
Saturday, March 2 | 11:00am - 12:00pm