Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory proudly welcomes our current artist-in-residence Alessa Esteban. The Mexican artist will be working in our studio at Sechshauserstraße 28, 1150 Vienna, from the 1st July to 31st August, 2013.
Fashionably Voodooooooh!
Polaroid Digitalized Photograph
Measures Variable
2010
About the artist:
“I was born in Mexico in the town where the famous tequila is made, but I grew up in the City, my mother, a very beautiful Mexican woman, always moved from one place to another so I was a little nomad. My father is originally from Russia, but I never met him. My mother use to tell me stories about him and his frozen land. My favourite writers are Russian of course.
Thanks to my mother Im such a creative person, she used to tell me bizarre stories and used to sing morbid tunes for bed. My very first gift before I knew how to walk or talk, was a box of colors, my mother really estimulated my artistic sensibility taking me every weekend to theatre and movies. Then my sisters were born and I felt very responsible for them, I started to read a lot, to have nightmares and that’s exactly how my work started.
I never stoped studying, when I was 15 years old I made a master in Dramaturgie at the BUAP university in Puebla, Mexico; I did theatre a lot, with different theatre groups, I studied literature critics and poetry at the writers house in Mexico, I still write some things but I never publish. At the end I decided to study professionally visual arts.
At the moment I’m studying at the Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien a multimedia and sculpture specialization at the Erwin Wurm’s class. I finished Fine Arts Academy in Mexico City on 2005, and fortunately at the same year I came to Austria with an artistic residency at Künstlerhaus Studio in SalzburgI had two ”open studio” very successful receptions in the Landesatelier-Künstlerhaus Salzburg during my stay at that time.
Next year I had a scholarship for the Summer Academy at the Salzburg’s fortress, so I kept on coming back to Austria constantly.
I studied a master in psychoanalysis in Mexico City before, for three years, studies based on freud and Lacan theories basically, 2000-2005. But also I found Melanie Klein’s view very interesting. I left the formation when I was going to start practice with patients. For me was completed the aim of knowing enough to apply it to my art work.
I had solo shows at KBK arte Contemporáneo Gallery in Mexico City and on Funk Fu Net virtual gallery created in Prague in the 2006.
My work is represented in the United Arab Emirates by Carbon12 Dubai Gallery; I was at the show “Seven Positions” on 2009.
In Mexico I exhibited in Proyectos Monclova Gallery, 2006; and I have had participated in several collective exhibits with different galleries like Ramis Barquet in New York, Garash Galería in México City, Luis Adelantado in Valencia, Art & Idea Vienna and Poly Gallery in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Some of these galleries showed my work in different art festivals like MACO, Miami Scope or WTC art fair in Beijing China, this last one with Arcaute Arte Contemporáneo Gallery.
I’ve been quite busy organizing my own projects with artists from different countries, nationalities and art medias, involving sponsorships from international cultural institutions as well as private companies, promoting a real exchange of ideas and enriching as much as possible the process of working from each artist and myself, contacting institutions and finding the support for developing cultural events based on the colective results. Being in charge of the exhibit in
Bilbao Arte foundation in Spain on 2008 together with my sister, amongst others. We perform together in various cultural and fashion events as the Twisted Sisters, developing concepts together.
I have been living and producing in Vienna, participating in several group exibitions like “site- non site” curated by Amer Abbas or the solo show “Voodoo Tales” I had in the young offspace center C17.
An upcoming show hosted by LandSalzburg represents a very special moment and oportunity to conect my origin land and the beloved country that hosted me since several years ago. I’m very glad to take place on the exhibition in Traklhaus Salzburg 2010.”
More information about the artist: http://www.alessaesteban.com.mx