Pedro Lasch

Lasch has exhibited at the Venice Biennale{{Cite web |last=Coombs |first=Gretchen |date=2015-08-26 |title=Three Days of Debating Social Justice at the Venice Biennale |url=https://hyperallergic.com/232102/three-days-of-debating-social-justice-at-the-venice-biennale/ |access-date=2025-02-12 |website=Hyperallergic |language=en-US}} and Creative Time Summit Venice,{{Cite web |title=Special Projects - The Creative Time Summit |url=https://summit.creativetime.org/venice-2015/special-projects/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=summit.creativetime.org}} been featured in the AND AND AND platform of dOCUMENTA (13),{{Cite web |title=Propositions for a Decolonial Aesthetics and "Five Decolonial Days in Kassel" (Documenta 13 AND AND AND) – Social Text |url=https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/propositions-for-a-decolonial-aesthetics-and-five-decolonial-days-in-kassel-documenta-13-and-and-and/ |access-date=2025-02-12 |website=socialtextjournal.org}} and collaborated with Atis Rezistans/Ghetto Biennale for documenta fifteen.{{Cite web |last=Durbin |first=Andrew |last2=Kurth |first2=Patrick |last3=Stead |first3=Chloe |date=2022-07-15 |title=Editors’ Picks: Six Standout Projects from Documenta 15 |url=https://www.frieze.com/article/editors-picks-documenta-15 |access-date=2025-02-12 |website=Frieze |language=en}} He has also participated in the Havana Biennial,{{Cite web |date=2015-05-27 |title=In Cuba, Duke Professor Connects Politics, Art {{!}} Duke Today |url=https://today.duke.edu/2015/05/laschcuba |access-date=2025-02-12 |website=today.duke.edu |language=en}} the Gwangju BiennaleThe 16 Beaver Group, “Between US: Introduction,” Fever Variations: Gwangju Biennale 2006 Catalogue, Vol. I. Editor, Hong-hee Kim. Gwangju Biennale Foundation. (2006): 281–295. and group exhibitions at MoMA PS1,Kartofel, Graciela. Greater New York / MoMA PS1, Art Nexus, Issue No. 78, Nov. 2010. Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, Hayward Gallery,{{Cite web |title=Scholars@Duke publication: TAKE ME TO THE TOP: The Fine Art of Finance, A project by Pedro Lasch, with the collaboration of Stefano Harney and Sverre Spoelstra London Eye, July 5th, 2012 Produced by Hayward Gallery for the Wide Open School exhibition |url=https://scholars.duke.edu/publication/1019520 |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=scholars.duke.edu}} Centro Nacional de las Artes,{{cite web |date=6 April 2011 |title=Taller Intercambio Sonidero Transnacional, Centro Nacional de las Artes |url=http://transitiomx.net/anteriores/2007/es/edicion2007/eventos/sonidero/index.html |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Transitiomx.net}} and MUAC.

Lasch's first museum retrospective,{{Cite web |last=Fernández-Barkan |first=Davida |date=2024-02-26 |title=Super Structures |url=https://www.artforum.com/columns/davida-fernandez-barkan-on-mexico-city-art-week-549689/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=Artforum |language=en-US}} Pedro Lasch: Entre líneas / Between the Lines,{{Cite web |title=Mariana Fernández on Pedro Lasch - Criticism - e-flux |url=https://www.e-flux.com/criticism/589797/pedro-lasch-s-entre-lneas-between-the-lines |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=www.e-flux.com |language=en}} was presented in 2023-2024 by Mexico's Ministry of Culture (SC) and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL), through Laboratorio Arte Alameda. Additional major solo exhibitions and projects have been shown in The Phillips Collection, Nasher Museum of Art, Sean Kelly Gallery,Cotter, Holland. "PRIMITIVISM REVISITED: After the End of an Idea." The New York Times (January, 2007). and Galería del Palacio Nacional. Lasch’s first major solo exhibition, at the Queens Museum of Art in New York,{{cite web |date=9 July 2006 |title=Open Routines: Recent Projects by Pedro Lasch |url=http://www.queensmuseum.org/open-routines-recent-projects-by-pedro-lasch |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Queensmuseum.org}} was named as the best of the year by Michael Rakowitz in Artforum.Rakowitz, Michael. “The Artists’ Artists- Best Shows of 2006, ArtForum, December 2006.

Conceived in 2001, but first presented at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC (2014), the series Abstract Nationalism{{Cite web |date=2014-10-23 |title=Pedro Lasch's Abstract Nationalism / National Abstraction: Part 1 {{!}} The Phillips Collection |url=https://www.phillipscollection.org/blog/2014-10-23-pedro-laschs-abstract-nationalism-national-abstraction-part-1 |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=www.phillipscollection.org |language=en}} includes video works, visual scores, paintings, musical performances, and various media associated with socially engaged art. Channeling the intense emotional and cultural associations we have towards anthems and flags, the series addresses notions of independence, colonialism, (multi)nationalism, migrations, and mapping, all so deeply related to the history of nations and cultures. .

The Black Mirror series began when the Nasher Museum of Art commissioned a new work to accompany their exhibition From El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Phillip III. The series as a whole, with its play of transparencies and reflections, makes impossible any clear separation between past-present, artwork-viewer-environment, or the pre- and post-Columbian. Site-specific installations and artworks in the series have since been produced at the National Palace Art Gallery in Mexico City, MUAC, Prospect New Orleans, and M.S. Rau. In 2015, it was one of seven finalists to represent Mexico at its Venice Biennial Pavilion.

Phantom Limbs,{{Cite web |title=The Watchers - e-flux Agenda |url=https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/274372/the-watchers/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=www.e-flux.com |language=en}} a 9/11 memorial painting series and installation (produced between October 2001 and July 2011) was presented as an intervention within institutions and museums that house Western canonical paintings and contemporary art. Each work in this series corresponds to a place in the world where the New York Twin Towers are fictionally reconstructed as an international memorial. Some of these places are contested territories or relevant sites for international affairs between 2001 and 2011. Twin Towers Go Global{{cite web |title=Twin Towers Go Global |url=http://www.twintowersgoglobal.org/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Twin Towers Go Global}} is a new media work that complements the Phantom Limbs series and shares much of the same research material.

During the peak of the 2006 United States immigration reform protests, three projects, Naturalizations,{{cite web |title=Pedro Lasch, Naturalizations |url=http://www.naturalizaciones.com/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Naturalizaciones.com}} LATINO/A AMERICA,{{cite web |title=Pedro Lasch, LATINO/A AMERICA |url=http://www.latinoaamerica.com/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Latinoaamerica.com}} and Tianguis Transnacional{{cite web |title=Pedro Lasch, Tianguis Transnacional |url=http://www.tianguistransnacional.com/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Tianguistransnacional.com}} were presented in Lasch’s first major solo exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York. LATINO/A AMERICA is a conceptual series of the presentation and distribution of a new map of the American continent. The Tianguis Transnacional series is defined by a steady exploration of the aesthetic, social, and political manifestations of informal trade. Naturalizations is a work in progress based on the production and distribution of a set of masks inviting wearers to constantly question “the natural,” and those institutions - religious, mythological or governmental - which claim to know what is “natural.”

ART of the MOOC is a series of free massive open online courses (MOOCs) designed by Lasch to simultaneously serve as an international work of public art. Video lectures, complementary materials, and presentations by cross-national artists, curators, critics, and activists provide a formal and theoretical overview of the fundamental themes within socially-engaged public art. Originally produced by Creative Time in 2015,{{Cite web |title=Art of the MOOC |url=https://creativetime.org/projects/art-mooc/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=Creative Time |language=en-US}} the series is now permanently available through Coursera.{{Cite web |title=Pedro Lasch, Instructor |url=https://www.coursera.org/instructor/~10670344 |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=Coursera |language=en}}

The Social Practice Lab (SPL){{Cite web |title=About – Social Practice Lab |url=https://sites.fhi.duke.edu/socialpracticelab/about/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |language=en-US}} brings together scholars, artists, and activists through signature projects and public interventions. Founded and directed by Lasch, the SPL is housed within the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. With major funding awarded by the Mellon Foundation,{{Cite web |last=Institute |first=John Hope Franklin Humanities |title=Social Practice Lab Awarded $500,000 Mellon Grant to Advance Artistic Research Programs {{!}} John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute |url=https://fhi.duke.edu/news/social-practice-lab-awarded-500000-mellon-grant-advance-artistic-research-programs/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |website=fhi.duke.edu |language=en}} the SPL facilitates the Artistic Research Initiative (ARI) Fellows Program.{{Cite web |title=Artistic Research Initiative – Social Practice Lab |url=https://sites.fhi.duke.edu/socialpracticelab/artistic-research-initiative/ |access-date=2025-02-13 |language=en-US}} ARI Fellows are offered a unique opportunity to address challenging topics, jump-start experiments, manufacture prototypes, and create social and performative models that can then be applied to both public and professional spheres.

Lasch studied art at the Cooper Union with Dore Ashton, Hans Haacke, Day Gleeson, and Doug Ashford (Group Material),[http://cooper.edu/art/faculty/doug-ashford/ Doug Ashford] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110124024938/http://cooper.edu/art/faculty/doug-ashford/|date=January 24, 2011}} and later completed an MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. Lasch has been regularly involved with the New York art and politics collective 16 Beaver Group16 Beaver Group, “Iraq Questionnaire Answers,” October Magazine, MIT Press, Winter 2008, No. 123, Pages 149–160. since 2000. Between 1999 and 2004, Lasch created a series of simultaneously local and transnational social projects with immigrant and indigenous groups in Chiapas and Quintana Roo (Mexico), and Jackson Heights (Queens, New York). In collaboration with grassroots organizations like Asociación Tepeyac de New York{{cite web |title=Asociación Tepeyac de New York |url=http://www.tepeyac.org/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Tepeyac.org}} and Mexicanos Unidos de Queens, Lasch founded and directed the experimental afterschool program Art, Story-Telling, and the Five Senses (El arte, el cuento y los cinco sentidos). This pedagogical work received consecutive years of support from artist Robert Motherwell’s Dedalus Foundation,{{cite web |title=Dedalus Foundation |url=http://dedalusfoundation.org/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Dedalus Foundation}} and it included noted guest participants such as Ricardo Dominguez{{cite web |date=27 January 2003 |title=Diane Ludin, "Art, Storytelling, and the Five Senses," |url=http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/7109/ |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Rhizome.org}} from Electronic Disturbance Theater. Lasch has taught at Duke University since 2002. During his years at Duke, Lasch's work has developed in an intellectual environment that includes influential figures in critical theory such as Fredric Jameson, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Anthony Neal. His co-publications and direct artistic collaborations with colleagues there include projects with Esther Gabara,Gabara, Esther. "Recycled Photographs: Moving Still Images of Mexico City, 1950/2000," Photography and Writing in Latin America: Double Exposures. Eds. Marcy Schwartz and Mary Beth Tierney-Tello. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, (2005) Walter Mignolo,{{cite web |title=Walter Mignolo. "Aiesthesis Decolonial." Revista Calle 14 Arte y Cultura vol. 4 no. 4 (2010): 10–25 |url=http://gemini.udistrital.edu.co/comunidad/grupos/calle14/Volumen4/ContenidoVol4.html |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Gemini.udistrital.edu.co}} Michael Hardt,"Free Association/Means in Common." Rethinking Marxism, Special Issue: The Commons and the Forms of the Commune. Edited by Anna Curcio and Ceren Ozselcuk. vol. 22 no. 3 (July, 2010). Kristine Stiles, and Ariel Dorfman,{{cite web |title=Point-Counterpoint-Fusion – Homage to Daniel Buren (Punto-Contrapunto-Fusión-Homenaje a Daniel Buren) |url=http://www.naturalizaciones.com/naturalizations.pointcounterpoint.html |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Naturalizaciones.com}} as well as the staff of the Nasher Museum of Art.{{cite web |date=29 October 2010 |title=Pedro Lasch, editor, Black Mirror / Espejo Negro (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010) |url=http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=48016 |accessdate=26 January 2012 |publisher=Dukeupress.edu}} Lasch has also served on various public and private boards, including the North Carolina Arts Council (2007–2010), and he occasionally curates exhibitions of other artists’ work that complement his artistic production.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.pedrolasch.com/ Pedro Lasch]
• [http://www.16beavergroup.org/ 16 Beaver Group]
• [http://andandand.org/ AND AND AND]

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Category:Decolonial artists

Category:American contemporary painters

Category:Hispanic and Latino American artists

Category:Living people

Category:Duke University faculty

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Artists from Mexico City

Category:Cooper Union alumni

Category:Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London

Category:Mexican emigrants to the United States

Category:American male painters

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:21st-century American painters

Category:21st-century male artists

Category:Mexican political artists