RAZA
Laura & Valentina Caraballo
One Must Go Back to Move Forward
February 5, 2021 6:00 pm
Presented in partnership with Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation (ICAI).
Please join us on February 12, 2021 at 6:00 pm for an artist talk by Laura and Valentina Caraballo of RAZA on their exhibition I lost the Keys to Apartment 302, currently showing virtually on The Bows’ website. The Colombian artist collective will discuss the concept of the exhibition, their artistic process and influences, and the concept of “home” through a psychosocial lens.
RAZA is a newborn multi-medium art collective formed by South American artists Valentina and Laura Caraballo, seeking to further their understandings of the self and world through art.
Valentina Caraballo is a visual arts student interested in exploring the self and psyche as connectors of the general experience and as a means of understanding herself and others.
Laura Caraballo is an artist inspired by her Political Science background who seeks to externalize her ongoing discontent with the establishment through 2D imagery representing social issues.
The artists bring their different approaches and artistic skills together by agreeing on concepts with shared significance and utilizing the intersections of their creative expressions as guides.
RAZA was born from a sense of otherness, informed by the artists’ immigrant experience, and the relief art provided and continues to provide. The collective seeks to become a space where otherness is necessary and invited while exploring and learning new forms of creating, understanding, and unlearning.
The Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation is an arts council based in Calgary, Alberta; it was founded in January 2019 with the purpose of connecting newcomer artists with the existing arts community in Calgary. We strive to provide resources and information that would help newcomer artists turn their passion and creativity into thriving careers or businesses.
ICAI actively encourages diversity of expression and culture through the creation of a safe and welcoming community hub where newcomer artists feel free to express their distinct cultural identities through their arts. ICAI acknowledges funding from the Calgary Arts Development.
The Bows is an artist-run centre in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, Alberta, Treaty 7 Territory. Our core goals are: to support the development, creation, and presentation of new work by early-career artists; to provide affordable studio space for Calgary-based artists; and to broaden the reach and scope of contemporary art in Calgary, with the ultimate, if ambitious, aim to expose Calgarians to artistic work that explores pressing contemporary issues. We work toward these goals with an artist-centric approach that prioritizes the wholesale support of artists; creative and radical uses of spaces outside of the gallery; and a curatorial focus on projects and practices that dovetail with the specific socio-political, cultural, colonial, economic, and Indigenous histories and contexts of Alberta. Ultimately, The Bows strives to empower and support artists to imagine radical futures, and to invite those inside and outside of our community to be co-conspirators in realizing such futures. The Bows gratefully acknowledges funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Calgary Arts Development.
ICAI and The Bows are situated on Treaty 7 Territory. We acknowledge the original stewards of this land: the Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Siksika, Piikani and Kainai Nations, Tsuut’ina Nation, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley, and the Métis Nation, Region III. We make this acknowledgement alongside our commitment to honour our relationships with all community members, artists, contractors, staff and board members, including those who are Indigenous, displanted, newcomers, and settlers, as well as all the more-than-human beings that constitute our world. As such, we strive to enact our work with integrity and respect, to honour these values and commitments
