In Conversation: Daniel Bejar, Fontaine Capel, Dionisio Cortes Ortega & Bel Falleiros

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About

2020 Socrates Artist Fellows Daniel Bejar, Fontaine Capel, Dionisio Cortes Ortega, and Bel Falleiros spoke about their respective projects for ‘Call and Response,’ Part II of the ‘MONUMENTS NOW‘ exhibition at Socrates. Curatorial Assistant danilo machado moderated the discussion.

Speaker Bios

Daniel Bejar

Daniel Bejar is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work challenges the politics of space and bodies within our physical and digital worlds through site-specific performance, intervention, installation, photography, text, sculpture, and web-based media.

In 2018, Bejar was commissioned to create a permanent public artwork at a public school in Queens, NY, by the NYC Percent for Art program. Bejar has received many prestigious awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work (2015), a Franklin Furnace Fund Grant (2014), and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Grant (2013).

He has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Espai-d’art Contemporani de Castello, Spain; El Museo Del Barrio, NY; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany; and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. Bejar has an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz, NY, and a BFA from Ringling College of Art & Design, Sarasota, FL.

His piece for ‘MONUMENTS NOW:’ Part II – ‘Call and Response‘ at Socrates Sculpture Park is ‘Monument for Immigrants (In Advance of I.C.E. Raid).’

Fontaine Capel

Fontaine Capel (b. 1990, NYC) uses performance, video, monumental drawing, sculpture, installation, and speculative proposals to consider our present roles and to imagine our possible futures.

Capel has performed and exhibited works at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, the Jewish Museum, and will be included in the upcoming Museo del Barrio Trienal; has attended residencies at Residencia Corazón Argentina, ACRE, and the Chicago Artist Coalition; and was a Cuba One Foundation fellow. Capel is a frequent collaborator, and has founded and led several community-centered artist-run projects.

Fontaine Capel’s piece for ‘MONUMENTS NOW:’ Part II – ‘Call and Response‘ at Socrates Sculpture Park is ‘Proposal for a Monument (Two).’

Dionisio Cortes Ortega

Dionisio Cortes Ortega is an artist and registered architect in New York and co-founder of Reform Architecture. He was born in Mexico to parents that are also both artists and architects, and they moved to New York when Dionisio was 6 years old to experience the New York art scene of the 90s.  He took full advantage of this opportunity, attending both Laguardia Arts High School and the Cooper Union. Though his primary profession is architecture, Dionisio continues to develop his artistic practice through the creation of large scale outdoor installations. In 2018 Dionisio was awarded a grant to build a piece titled Sitting Together at the Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx that critiqued the established proceedings of courtroom cases. The following year, he was invited to the Mueller Gallery at Caldwell University to exhibit Blurred Boundaries, an interactive photography installation that challenges the perceived differences between the United States and Mexico

Dionisio Cortes Ortega’s piece for ‘MONUMENTS NOW:’ Part II – ‘Call and Response‘ at Socrates Sculpture Park is ‘Croton Arch of Triumph.’

Bel Falleiros

Bel Falleiros is a Brazilian artist whose practice focuses on land identity. Starting with her hometown, São Paulo, she’s worked to understand how contemporary landscapes and their monuments (mis)represent the diverse layers of presence that constitute a place. Walking is core to her practice and to her first solo show at CAIXA Cultural São Paulo, as well as her residency at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil (2014). Since arriving in the U.S., she has worked to create spaces for grounding and connecting people, including a site-specific installation at Pecos National Park, New Mexico (2016), an earth-work at Burnside Farm, Detroit (2017), and functional sculptures for a community garden in collaboration with Tewa Women United, during the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Equal Justice Residency (2018). She is currently part of the Monuments Now show at Socrates Sculpture Park and of the More Art Engaging Artist Fellowship (New York). Beyond her studio practice, she participates in collaborative projects across the Americas connecting art, education and autonomous thinking. Bel is a teaching artist at Escuelita en Casa, Garner Arts Center, Casa Contemporânea and Dia:Beacon.

Bel Falleiros’ piece for ‘MONUMENTS NOW:’ Part II – ‘Call and Response‘ at Socrates Sculpture Park is ‘America (un)known.’

danilo machado

danilo machado is a poet, curator, and public programmer living on occupied land. Interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power, danilo is the curator of the exhibitions ‘Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text’ (Franklin Street Works, 2019-20) and ‘support structures’ (The 8th Floor Gallery/Virtual, 2020). A 2020-21 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail, ArtCritical, TAYO Literary Magazine, among others. danilo is the co-founder and co-curator of the reading series Maracuyá Peach and the chapbook/broadside fundraiser already felt: poems in revolt & bounty. They are working to show up with care for their communities.