Valeria Montoya ella/her (MX | 1983)

 

Valeria is a mixed media artist whose work explores speculative fiction and the archaeology of suspicion, focusing on themes such as history, modernity, and the political epistemology of bodies. Her practice primarily involves analog materials and techniques, incorporating elements like human hair, electromagnetic devices and technologies, and sensorimotor interactions of the body mediated by sunlight.

 

Montoya holds a Master’s in Media and Art Production as Research from the University of Barcelona, Spain. Her work spans three professional branches: artistic practice, pedagogical practice, and editorial-curatorial practice. Montoya is interested in developing methods of situated art, spatial narratives, and corporeality, understanding these main topics as directly related to the specificity of the culture and the space we inhabit.

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2016-to date: Director & Founder of The Lab Program: Art-Research & Mobility Network. An art-laboratory focus on research about site-specific art making and non white cube minded curatorial practices. Facilitating collaborative work by engaging int’l artists with local and self-run art spaces. The Lab Program is currently based in Mexico City and it informs the practice of the engaged artists directly by the city dynamics. A four week workshop in the shape of an art-lab to guide and design art-researches, keeping in mind a curatorial approach that instigate in the process of public space and formats that fit each nature of each practitioner.

 

2017-to date Runs PotentA__ a ghost editorial and  zine- printhouse that primarily distributes content in Mexico City. The platform focuses on editing, translating to spanish, and disseminating materials centered on space narratives, situated practices, and embodiment. In 2023, PotentA__ open for public the first zine library in Mexico. 

 

2020-2022 Part-time Educator developing and teaching educational contents towards digital art, Time-based Art Practices and Spatial narratives in the art-practice at Universidad de las Américas-Puebla, México, Fine Arts Faculty.

 

Last Exhibitions, Archives and Fundings:

​PECDA- Program for the Promotion of Art-Creation and Development of National Culture- National Creation System (Co-Funded by State of Mexico) (2024-2025); CENART, Floating Geographies, Mexico City (2023); Allied – Kyiv Biennial, The Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv, Ukraine (2021); MA Narrative Environments, Central St. Martins, United Kingdom (2020); Carico Massimo, Livorno, Italy (2020); Sin Cinta Previa, Chuquimarca Projects, Chicago, United States (2020); Museo Amparo Foundation, Puebla, Mexico (2019); Archivo Eject: Video Performance, housed in the Documentation Center, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City (2019); III Landscape Biennial, Nogales Museum of Art, Sonora, Mexico (2019); Heinrich Böll-Stiftung, Bremen (2019); MEIO Cura-Flotar Program (2019); Reitir: International Collaboration Project, Iceland (2015).

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