Locust Projects is pleased to present Emergía Miami, the United States premiere of an ongoing project by Mexico City-based artist Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda. For the project, which has been presented in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Caracas and Sao Paolo, the artist searches for clues to a shared cultural experience in each city. He conducts field research to identify symbols that hold a particular potency in the minds of residents—from political figures to pop icons to pre-Columbian graphics. The symbols Sepúlveda collects in Miami will be painted on his back with watercolor paste, and then washed away with sweat as he exerts continued physical activity. Rendered liquid by the artist’s perspiration, the image is then transferred as a monoprint onto cotton paper. These prints, along with a video of their production, will be included in this exhibition. This is the first time that Sepúlveda is the sole performer in the project, at once identifying, adopting, transforming and realizing the symbols identified in his ongoing investigation of the collective Latin American imagination. Emergía is especially relevant in Miami, a city that many people from South and Central America have chosen to call home.

ABOUT MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ SEPULVEDA
Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 1971, Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda studied architecture and photography in Monterrey, where he began his artistic career. His work has been exhibited internationally at Museo Experimental EL ECO and Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, White Box in New York, and venues in Buenos Aires, Havana, La Paz, Quito, and Paris.