Yoshua okon biography

Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City in , where he currently lives. His work, like a series of near-sociological experiments executed for the camera, blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation and questions habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality. In he received an MFA from UCLA with a Fulbright scholarship. His solo shows exhibitions include: Salò Island, UC Irvine, Irvine; Piovra, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan; Poulpe, Mor Charpentier, Paris; Octopus, Cornerhouse, Manchester and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and SUBTITLE, Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich. His group exhibitions include: Manifesta 11, Zurich; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; Antes de la resaca, MUAC, Mexico City; Incongruous, Musèe Cantonal des Beux-Arts, Lausanne; The Mole´s Horizon, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre; Amateurs, CCA Wattis; San Francisco; Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London; Adaptive Behavior, New Museum,

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Hammer Projects: Yoshua Okón

By John C. Welchman 

Deployed in signature outsize orange shopping carts, squatting on low-slung lumber trolleys, or crawling commando-cum-campesino-style on the parking-lot asphalt between ranks of SUVs, light trucks, and pickups, the combatants in Yoshua Okón’s multichannel video installation Octopus () face off in the precincts of the Cypress Park Home Depot, a couple of miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Dressed in jeans and black or white shirts, they tote imaginary handguns, invisible AKs, or hand-faked binoculars. Ducking around the commercial signscape (“California’s Home Improvement Warehouse,” “Rent Me Hourly At . . . ”) and weaving between vehicles, Okón’s irregulars act out abbreviated conflict simulations in a ritualized replay of the civil war in Guatemala. Set off by a CIA-led coup that ousted the reformist president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in , the conflict simmered—and raged—in the Central American nation for ne

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Yoshua Okon

Yoshua Okón is an artist born and raised in Mexico City. He traveled to Montreal and Los Angeles for his BFA and MFA degrees, then returned to Mexico and pursued what has been a successful international career with group and solo exhibitions spanning the globe, including, most recently, shows at the Hayward galleri in London, Fundación Alumnos47 in Mexico City, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland. Two of Okón's provocative film installations are featured in the Modern's exhibition México inre Out: Themes in Art Since , offering a glimpse into the artist's diverse oeuvre that includes sculpture, performance, video, and installation. In his work, he addresses issues such as fear, violence, and identity as they apply to local experience, but with recognition of their shared universality across time and geographies.  

 In a conversation with two other artists from Inside Out and