LAZO which in Spanish meaning ‘tie’ or ‘link’, is an art collective that brings together artists and related practitioners of Latin American & Caribbean descent to create participatory projects and exhibitions. LAZO’s members are Claudia Cortínez, Rodrigo Moreira, Mauricio Cortes Ortega, and Alva Mooses.
Their collaboration began while studying at Yale University and was formalized in 2018 while artists-in-residence at the Loisaida Center during which they organized 5 months of art/community programming. The collective is based in NYC and works closely with artists and organizations throughout the Americas.
Each member of the collective maintains independent and interdisciplinary studio practices ranging from various forms of printmaking, bookmaking, and photography.
In their most recent projects have been in collaboration with Latinx Spaces, The Eduardo Sívori Museum in Buenos Aires, The Community Museum Xico in Mexico City, the Loisaida Center, The Lower East Side Printshop, and currently The Clemente and The Center for Book Arts in NYC—spanning a range from social to critical contemporary art spaces.
Image above and below: LAZO leading “Transfers and Impressions” workshop at Arts Letters & Numbers in Averill Park, NY
LAZO is currently in residence as part of The Clemente’s Interdisciplinary Arts/ Curatorial Residency.
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Inc. or The Clemente as usually referred to, is a Puerto Rican/Latinx multi-arts cultural institution rooted in NYC’s Lower East Side/Loisaida. They are focused on the cultivation, presentation, and preservation of Puerto Rican and Latinx culture, as well as to a multi-ethnic / international latitude. The Clemente also provides affordable working space and venues to artists, small arts organizations, emergent and independent community producers that reflect the cultural diversity; countless New York based Latinx, BIPOC, Lower East Side, and international partners to create multi-disciplinary work and productions in a collaborative environment. Read more about the amazing doings at The Clemente at www.theclementecenter.org
Image of The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Inc, picked up from The Clemente website
While at the Clemente, LAZO’s focus is on realizing various participatory installations and an upcoming publication that incorporates NY based Latinx artists.
Their most recent exhibition at Abrazo Interno Gallery at the Clemente, is titled Letters of a Compass. An installation created by the LAZO art collective, featuring a series of performances by NYC-based musicians, poets, and performers.
The exhibition included a central platform structure that echoed the four cardinal points and functioned as a bridge, a podium, a crossroads, and a stage. Along the walls are photographs of the sky gathered from throughout the Americas, printed with analog and digital methods. A series of the images were printed on envelopes referring to the materiality of an epistolary practice, now almost defunct through the immediacy of digital correspondence. Both collaborative and participatory, Letters of Compass addressed relations that have been deeply severed during the pandemic, such as communication, travel, and physical interaction.
Letters of a Compass, installation view at Abrazo Gallery, The Clemente
In this show visitors were invited to deposit notes, drawings, photographs, and small ephemera through the slots of the narrow platform on the central structure —these items will form part of a culminating publication that archives the materials gathered during the exhibition. Like a compass rose (rosa de los vientos / rosa dos ventos), the platform’s cross directional design suggests the possibility of orienting oneself within the various prints and photographs on the gallery walls.
The surrounding printed images point to nowhere and everywhere. The earth’s expansive sky is often depicted as a site for endless contemplation and experiences of the sublime, yet it is also a universal ground for navigation, political contestation, human pollution, and a vast range of complex conditions that define the human experience. The translucent effect of the halftone screen-prints, and the airy quality of the cyanotype process speaks to the fragility of humanity's current relationships to the physical world.
Letters of a Compass, installation view at Abrazo Gallery, The Clemente
LAZO’s installation was an invitation to meditate on cielo y tierra / céu e terra and ask how we center in times of severed relationships and limited encounters? How do we open space for contemplation and collaboration when our focus is subsisting day-to-day, and notions of creativity and spontaneity are overruled by monetization and separation? Additionally, our invaluable moments of contemplation are often mediated through algorithms outside of us. How do we reorient ourselves with other beings, spaces, and time?
Letters of a Compass, performance by Rafael Sanchez at Abrazo Gallery, The Clemente
All Images and text courtesy or LAZO and from The Clemente Website.
Read more about LAZO at www.openlazo.com // Follow them on Instagram @openlazo