Join El Museo del Barrio for the virtual launch of an unprecedented new digital artwork created by the Cuban-born artist Reynier Leyva Novo. Entitled Methuselah and commissioned through the generous support of VIA Art Fund, the artwork virtually reproduces the 5,000 km migratory journey of a single monarch butterfly, tracking its travel from southern Canada across the United States to Mexico during its eight-month annual reproductive cycle. Embodied through the life of a virtual avatar, the epic journey is hosted and reproduced in real time on a specially designed, open-access, dedicated website, and accompanies an augmented-reality presentation hosted at El Museo in conjunction with the exhibition, Juan Francisco Elso: Por América, opening at El Museo on October 27, 2022.
To celebrate the launch of the project, artist Reynier Leyva Novo will join guest curator Olga Viso in an online conversation and project demonstration moderated by El Museo organizing curator Susanna V. Temkin. Free and open to the public, this event is held in partnership with a community of nearly 20 international cultural organizations, whose transnational locations echo the monarch’s pathway across the Americas.
FREE via Zoom | To RSVP, click here.
Reynier Leyva Novo: Methuselah is commissioned by El Museo del Barrio through the generous support of VIA Art Fund. The project is presented in relation to the exhibition, Juan Francisco Elso: Por América, which is made possible thanks to major support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by Tony Bechara; Celso Gonzalez-Falla; Craig Robins; Steven and Judy Shank, and John Thomson. Commissions are made possible by VIA Art Fund and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Supported in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council.
ABOUT REYNIER LEYVA NOVO
Reynier Leyva Novo (b. 1983, Havana, Cuba, and based in Houston, Texas) is one of Cuba’s leading conceptual artists. Novo’s practice challenges ideology and symbols of power, challenging notions of an individual’s ability to affect change. His multidisciplinary practice includes mining historical data and official documents, the content of which he transforms into formally minimalist and conceptually charged sculptures and multimedia installations. Novo’s artwork has been presented at the Liverpool Biennial (2010), Venice Biennale (2011, 2017), Havana Biennial (2015, 2019), Shanghai Biennale (2018), Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (2019), Aichi Triennial (2019), among others. His art is collected by international museums and arts institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Bronx Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Museo de Bellas Artes de Habana; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.