YOSHUA OKÓN

2020

Oct 2

Pulpo (Octopus), 2011
single-channel video installation with Home Depot buckets
18:27

450/460 Victoria Street

“I see re-enactment as a form that can give us great insight into reality. Working with actual original participants and locations of historical events, as opposed to actors and sets, is a way to anchor the works to reality.” – Yoshua Okón

Pulpo (Octopus) features a group of Mayan men who fought in the Guatemalan Civil War of the 1990s. The video was shot in a Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles, California, where these men, now undocumented migrants, would meet to find work as day labourers. Popular re-enactments of the American Civil War are typically played out by hobbyists who recreate historic battle scenes in fetishistic detail; in contrast, Pulpo (Octopus) evokes its subjects’ past experiences and present vulnerability through a silent performance of simple choreographed gestures, far from home, without heroic spectacle.

Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1970 where he currently lives. His work, like a series of near-sociological experiments executed for the camera, blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation and questions habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality. In 2002, he received a Masters in Fine Arts from UCLA with a Fulbright scholarship. His solo shows exhibitions include Yoshua Okón: Collateral, MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico and Amparo Museum, Puebla, Mexico; Yoshua Okón, Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Yoshua Okón: In the Land of Ownership, ASAKUSA Tokyo, Japan; Salò Island, UC Irvine, Irvine, California; Piovra, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan, Italy; Poulpe, Mor Charpentier, Paris, France; Octopus, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California and SUBTITLE, Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich, Germany. His group exhibitions include Manifesta 11, Zurich, Switzerland; Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; Antes de la resaca, MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico; Incongruous, Musèe Cantonal des Beux-Arts, Lausanne, France; The Mole´s Horizon, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium; Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Amateurs, CCA Wattis, San Francisco, California; Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London, UK; Adaptive Behavior, New Museum, New York and Mexico City: an exhibition about the exchange rates between bodies and values, PS1, MoMA, New York, and Kunstwerke, Berlin. His work is included in the collections of Tate Modern, Hammer Museum, LACMA, Colección Jumex and MUAC, among others.