Armando Guadalupe Cortés

Armando Guadalupe Cortés is an artist living and working in the city of Brooklyn, New York. Originally from Urequío, a small farming community in Michoacán, México, Cortés draws inspiration from aspects of his two vastly different worlds. Cortés’ practice builds on storytelling, object making, and performance traditions. He merges traditional forms and methods from his native México with broader Latin American literary traditions, and contrasts and hybridizes them with elements of his life in the United States. In his work --ranging from small-scale sculpture to sculpture-based performance-- Cortés engages with themes of repetitive labor and endurance, reflecting an affinity for the traditional work of his family and the labor of immigrants in the United States. Similarly important is Cortés' use of clay, a medium full of history, metaphor, and possibility. Historically, clay has allowed for life, for possibility, for home. Currently, Cortés employs the material to draw parallels and contrasts, to create hybrids that re-examine historical time, place, and movement.