About the Exhibition
Elevate at 21c presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Elevate provides hotel guests with unique access to the work of notable regional artists, while featuring their work in the context of 21c’s contemporary art space. To view these works, please stop by the front desk to arrange access to the vitrines on guest room floors.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Carmen Castorena (Fayetteville, AR)
Oh Darling, the Cacti are sprouting again!, 2017
Enterrada, 2017
Untitled, 2017
El Nino de anos, 2017
Mixed media
Uniblonde, 2016
Mucho Ojo, 2016
Dress Up, 2016
Pesadilla, 2016
Mixed media collage and thread
Guadalupe Del Carmen Castorena entered the United States illegally at the age of seven with her family. She gained legal residency through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2013. Her mixed media work explores the struggle of a childhood marked by the stigma of being an undocumented alien, and the effects of this sense of isolation on her adolescent development. Her work presents contested stereotypes of beauty and belonging represented by Barbie dolls, disembodied limbs, fractured facial features, and surreal domestic tableaus. “While flowers are a representation of the Virgin of Guadalupe and her beauty, cacti are used to reflect on the phrase, ‘Nopal En La Frente’ or ‘cactus on your forehead,’ which is used to mock those who go around pretending they are not Mexican,” she writes. “After years of alienation and mixed conceptions of the self, which harmed my physiological development, I am on my journey to finding equity within two cultures by creating healing spaces through installation work.” Carmen was living in Bentonville, Arkansas at the time of her death in an automobile accident.
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Octavio Logo (Fayetteville, AR)
Pass Through, 2020
Acrylic, watercolor, paper, clay, wood
Octavio Logo’s installation Pass Through, explores themes of impermanence, identity, and exile, filtered through his personal experience as an immigrant to the United States from Mexico. This installation belongs to a series called In-Transit, incorporating blind drawing and the use of mark-making with the artist’s feet. The ephemeral nature of clay, as it shrinks and cracks over the course of time reflects the “memory of unknown paths left behind by countless people moving around the world since the beginning of human history.” Footprints, pressed and impressed, represent the fragmented hopes of nameless travelers whose migrations are forgotten, and erased by time.
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Landon Perkins (Bentonville, AR)
Structure No. 30, 2017
Structure No. 13, 2017
Structure No. 34, 2018
Structure No. 31, 2018
Screenprints
Reimagining machines and ready-made materials in perilous configurations, Perkins’ precisely rendered mechanisms physically embody narratives of shared human experience in today’s post-industrial landscapes. His prints explore conditions of dysfunctionality, suspect structural integrity, and consumption – themes further embodied in the tedious process of complex, multi-screen printing. “This tension of working toward visual perfection with the imperfection of the human hand is some-thing I find simultaneously cathartic and challenging.”
