Today we’d like to introduce you to Juan José Cielo.
Hi Juan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am a visual artist working in painting, photography, and short films. I was born in Medellin, Colombia and my family moved to Miami when I was very young. I grew up in Miami and went to an arts high school called New World School of the Arts and then on a full scholarship to The Cooper Union in New York City where I’ve been based since 2015. My family lives in Miami and I return frequently for projects in the city.
My work has been featured in exhibitions including the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Uruguay, the Consulate of Colombia in New York, the Alliance Français in Bogota, the XVII Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Manizales, Colombia, and The National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia.
In 2017, I was part of a Mars simulation program with The Mars Society. They are a private organization that has received research funding from NASA. I was part of a crew of artists and researchers in isolation in a full-scale facility in the isolated desert of Utah. I created photo and video works doing projection mapping on mountains at night and creating illuminated runways for ships in the desert for example.
Recent projects include being selected for the international arts residency: Fountainhead in Miami in 2023 and with Piero Atchugarry Gallery in their Garzon, Uruguay residency. The work has been featured on Univision, RCN Internacional television, and RCN Radio, and published in National Geographic Traveler magazine, El Heraldo Newspaper (Colombia), Hyperallergic, and ARTnews. In 2022, I was selected for the YoungArts Jorge M. Pérez $25,000 award.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I have pursued a career in the arts all my life. It presents many challenges, how to arrange one’s life in order to sustain an art practice and to make work. Living in New York has been an enormous challenge in terms of finding a place for oneself in the community and managing all the projects and jobs we have to take on to continue living in such an expensive city. I am learning from fellow artists and the communities that you take on many roles as an advocate for yourself and your work.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I create oil paintings, photography, and short films where futuristic technology is a force to experience the sublime. I create bodies of works in different mediums. Through these works, I create space where Latino myth and folklore are part of the visions of a futuristic world. This is an extension of my dual-cultural background because through the work I combine American dreams with Colombian heritage.
This is a product of having grown up in Miami and being shaped by seeing how diaspora communities maintain identity at a distance from their original cultures. Imagining the future is a strategy to question our reality. It expands on the thinking people familiar with migration engage in, imagining alternate destinies. It gives you a space to see one’s culture from a distance, and to understand what is essential to it.
Individuals who have migrated embrace elements in their lives that over time can change their identity. These transformations can include changes in language, worldview, and how we relate to our heritages over time. In the paintings, futuristic vehicles, their designs, and their placement in rural landscapes are symbols for these transformations. My paintings are about noticing what changes and what stays the same over time.
The works focus on how new elements that a culture adopts become classic and traditional. Mirroring the experience of transformation that immigrants encounter over time. Some of the futuristic ships appear to be Colombian, but there is something different about them- just like people who are children of immigrants who return to their family’s place of origin. The works question notions of progress and investigate what may be timeless across generations.
The paintings show scenes from the lives of immigrant families over generations. Scenes of family reunions, funerals, burials in outer space, the shadows of flying cars passing over the countryside, or a Colombian restaurant as a rest stop on a space station. They are meditations on how we relate to technology today in many forms.
Futuristic technology is the promise of a dream life. As well as technology as a marker of social class and power. The works set up tensions between rural and futuristic and then eliminate them in order to challenge viewers’ expectations about who is part of stories of the future. The video works address similar themes and dynamics.
In the video piece “Abuela, I am going to outer space”, I have a conversation with my grandmother in Spanish where I tell her I am going to outer space and she believes me. The conversation with my grandmother is a proxy for how conversations with grandparents when space travel is accessible. And discovering that, in her ability to believe, I was able to get an authentic reaction about what this type of journey would mean.
My grandmother says, “Well, I hope you have a safe trip and you go with god”. Which is in the end, what really matters after all. These are the timeless elements of worrying about your family members, worrying about a grand journey, and having children who have migrated to other countries. Through the work, I take folkloric inheritance and project it into the future.
How do you think about luck?
I have been very fortunate to have grown up in Miami and have been able to attend the specialized arts school, New World School of the Arts. It opened possibilities nationally. I earned a full scholarship to come to New York for an arts education with Cooper Union and this changed my life.
In terms of luck, I appreciate the concept of “making one’s own luck” in the sense that you have your work ready when opportunities present themselves. It is intimidating but important to jump into opportunities when they come. The programs I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of including in education, art residencies, and exhibitions have opened up doors and I am grateful to friends, teachers, and artists who have been mentors on this journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.juanjosecielo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juanjosecielo1/
Image Credits
Jose Ocampo and Piero Atchugarry Gallery (2023)
