San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Marcel Pardo Ariza: ‘I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky to Be Trans’
Pardo Ariza was born in Bogota, Colombia, and received their MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016 and their BA from Earlham College in Richmond, Ind.
In the Bay Area, their work has been exhibited at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Palo Alto Art Center, and the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose.
Pardo Ariza is the co-founder of Art Handlxrs, an organization that supports queer, BIPOC, trans and nonbinary people and women in professional arts industry support roles. They are also the recipient of the 2021 CAC Established Artists Award, the 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award and the 2017 Tosa Studio Award, among others.
Pardo Ariza’s practice frequently focuses on photography, queer identity, intergenerational connections and community collaborations. What’s on view: “I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky to Be Trans” is centered around an altar-like photo wall featuring portraits of leaders in the Bay Area transgender community including Honey Mahogany, Donna Personna, Jupiter Perara, Tina Aguirre and Aubrey Davis, as well as accompanying audio and video of the subjects.
The use of color blocking behind the portraits brings to mind Buddhist shrines, the grand architecture of cathedrals and the exuberance of queer clubs. A bench in the gallery is designed with the same color blocking.
The vertical arrangement of the photos suggests the artist is presenting a chosen family tree, a concept that is especially moving when you hear the stories of survival by the featured participants who share their journey finding community in the narratives.
In the artist’s words:
“White walls in galleries are a relatively recent thing and I
think that there’s so much power in reimagining how something (we take for granted)
could look — especially with photography. There’s so many rigid rules about how things should be framed, how things should be handled and what height this (photo) should be hung. When you’re starting to think about something like accessibility in different ways, that becomes oppressive.
I was also really interested in changing the lighting — inviting a little bit of club lighting, soft pink lighting — and then also having the music be something that was activated. Galleries for me are so silent, but I know that some people come and it feels sacred, healing, kind of like a religious situation. For me there’s something really powerful about
entering a space full of music and talking. I wanted the photos to take up space, but also the voices of folks to be in the space as well.
Furniture is also part of accessibility, and makes it even more immersive. I want you to feel like you have the right to be there for longer than a few seconds.”
On SECA: “I felt like there was a collective Black and brown energy (with the SECA group) that was ready to fill up space, and I loved that about this show. In the history of SECA, we haven’t really seen that. I’m so excited that this continues, and it will hopefully invite other artists to make powerful work.”