The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Pedro Reyes: Tuesday, March 2, 6:30–7:45 p.m. CT
Click here to join via Zoom, Passcode: SAICVAP
This event will be live captioned by CART.
Join us live for a virtual lecture by artist Pedro Reyes followed by an audience Q&A.
Pedro Reyes explores the power of individual and collective organization to incite change through communication, creativity, happiness, and humor. His work engages the interaction between physical and social spaces, making invisible geometry tangible in our personal relationships. Reyes designs projects that propose playful solutions to social problems, often enlisting viewers as participants through individual conversations, therapeutic acts, or as creators of objects. A sociopolitical critique of contemporary gun culture is addressed in Reyes’s Palas por Pistolas (2008), in which the artist worked with local authorities in Culiacán, Mexico, to melt down guns into shovels that were used to plant trees in cities elsewhere in the world. Similarly, in Disarm (2013) the Mexican government donated more than 6,700 confiscated firearms for Reyes to transform into mechanical musical instruments, which are automated to play a delightful, if surreal loop, retaining the raw emotion of their origination. Issues of community and compassion are addressed in Sanatorium, activated at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2011, dOCUMENTA (13) in Germany in 2012, and in 2014 at The Power Plant in Toronto and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Miami. In this work, visitors are invited to sign up for a “temporary clinic” with the mission of treating various kinds of urban malaise. His immersive exhibition Doomocracy, organized by Creative Time at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, marked the confluence of two events haunting the American cultural imagination at the time: Halloween and the 2016 US presidential election. Reyes’s expansive notion of sculpture examines the cognitive contradictions of modern life and the possibility of overcoming our particular crises by increasing our degree of individual and collective agency.
Reyes lives and works in Mexico City. Solo exhibitions include Museum Tinguely, Basel (2020); Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta (2019); Creative Time, New York (2016); Dallas Contemporary (2016); La Tallera, Mexico (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); ICA, Miami (2014); The Power Plant, Toronto (2014); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2011); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011); CCA Kitakyushu, Japan (2009); Bass Museum, Miami (2008); and San Francisco Art Institute (2008). Reyes has participated in group exhibitions at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2015); The National Museum of 21st Century Arts (MAXXI), Rome (2015); Beijing Biennale (2014); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012); and the Liverpool Biennial (2012); Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2012); Lyon Biennale, France (2009); and the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Reyes’s awards include the US Department of State Medal for the Arts (2016) and a Ford Foundation Fellowship (2016).
Portrait credit: Pedro Reyes. Photo by Marina Denisova.
Pedro Reyes Website
pedroreyes.net
Gallery Representation
lissongallery.com/artists/pedro-reyes
Visit Mañanaland today: Pedro Reyes's utopian vision plays out through an AR scavenger hunt
Helen Stoilas | The Art Newspaper | December 8, 2020
Artist Pedro Reyes and the Sublimation of Violence
Addis Goldman | Cultured | September 28, 2020
‘Anything Can Become Material for Art’: Watch Artist Pedro Reyes Turn Guns Into Musical Instruments and Marxist Theory Into a Puppet Show
Caroline Goldstein | Artnet News | August 20, 2020
The Bulletin and Pedro Reyes present Amnesia Atomica
Gayle Spinazze | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | February 24, 2020
Interview with Pedro Reyes at his Home and Studio in Mexico
Nina Azzarello | designboom | November 20, 2019
Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernández: 'death to planned obsolescence'
Gabriella Angeleti | The Art Newspaper | December 6, 2018
Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk and Ayn Rand Walk Into a Puppet Show*
Jennifer Schuessler | New York Times | April 16, 2018
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
'Doomocracy' Puts the Politics of Fear on Display in Brooklyn*
Randy Kennedy | New York Times | October 6, 2016
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
The Art of Direct Action by 
Pedro Reyes by 
Resistance Performed by 
Sanatorium Operations Manual by 
Baby Marx by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists engages science leaders, policy makers, and the interested public on topics of nuclear weapons and disarmament, the changing energy landscape, climate change, and emerging technologies.
Art21 - Pedro Reyes
Art21’s resources about the work of Pedro Reyes, including videos, texts, and exhibition images.
Messages for the City
Times Square Arts, Poster House, Print Magazine, and For Freedoms have launched a citywide public art campaign featuring artist-designed PSAs and messages of love, gratitude, and solidarity with New York City’s health care and essential workers.
Creative Time and Brooklyn Army Terminal present Pedro Reyes’ Doomocracy
Doomocracy, a major immersive installation by Reyes, marked the confluence of two events haunting the American cultural imagination: Halloween and the 2016 presidential election.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977-98).
