Artist-in-Residence C.J. Chueca
Photo by: Michael Palma Mir
C.J. Chueca was born in Lima, Perú, and moved to New York in 2003. In 2022, C.J. Chueca was part of "El Sonido de las voces que se hunden'' curated by Blanca de la Torre at Centro Cultural de España en Tegucigalpa; "What Lies Beneath" a two-person show at Kates Ferri Projects. In 2021 she had the two-person solo show “Micaela, La Sangre de Todas” in Vigil Gonzales Galería and participated in "A Very Anxious Feeling: Voices of Unrest in the American Experience; 20 Years of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection'' curated by Amethyst Rey Beaver and Eva Thornton at the Taubman Museum of Art; “XX (6 female Latinx artists working in abstraction)” at Latchkey Gallery in New York; “Landmark” at KM0.2 in San Juan de Puerto Rico; and Art Souterrain in Montreal with a public commissioned installation curated by Dulce Pinzón at Palais des Congres. She was the July art resident at Silo6776 with Kates-Ferri Projects in New Hope, Pennsylvania where she presented the solo show “Time Traveler”. She was part of "Hay algo incomestible en la garganta. Poéticas antipatriarcales y nueva escena en los años noventa" curated by Miguel López at ICPNA-Lima. She presented in 2020: “The Force of Water'' with Latchkey Gallery at the Core Club NYC. In 2019 she had the solo show “Somos La Noche y El Día” at Vigil Gonzales Galería; and was part of “Crónicas Migrantes, Historias communes entre Perú y Venezuela” curated by Fabiola Arroyo at MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima. In 2018 she had the solo shows: "I am the river behind the wall" at Mulherin Gallery in Toronto; and "Dos Cielos Azules/Two Blue Skies'' at ICPNA (Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano) for which she recently released a monograph in collaboration with Meier Ramirez and VM& Studio. This year and in 2023, C.J. Chueca will work in a public commission in the Bronx managed by Percent for Art, from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
In 2015 I started to name myself C.J. Chueca, an abbreviation of Cecilia Jurado Chueca, which began a new journey in my artistic practice. I have been a nomadic being since I was born. I moved to New York in 2003. Before this period I lived in different houses in Lima and in my first years of life, I lived in Mexico City and Oaxaca. My father migrated to Lima –the capital of Perú from a small town called Muquiyauyo-Jauja located in the high mountains of the Andes. My mother’s father was an orphan who traveled on a warship and eventually found a putative father in Valparaiso - Chile. My history and the history of my family of perpetual immigrants have led me to explore the concepts of home, territory, transition, multiculturality, uprooting, and solitude. On one way, focusing on talking about those lives that are still on the road (or without route) in the streets of the world. Eleanor Heartney writes in her essay: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”: C.J. Chueca creates walls that neither contain nor separate. Instead, they provide insight into the complex ways that walls operate in our lives.
But also, in another way, I am mesmerized by the power of water, its never-ending ride, its possibility to pass through the smallest gap, and its condition of eternal traveler. We are water, as we are rivers that will eventually mix with other rivers in the deepest water of the ocean.
- C.J. Chueca
