Camilo Godoy: Debtor
Camilo Godoy, Debtor (Citibank), Branding Iron, 2019 (Courtesy of the artist)
October 26 – November 29
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 26, 7-9pm
Conversation with the Artist and Writer Mira Dayal: Tuesday, October 29, 7-8pm
Financial Workshop with Ela Troyano: Saturday, November 16, 3-5pm (Register Here)
Open Source Gallery presents Debtor, an exhibition of new works by Camilo Godoy.
Camilo Godoy’s practice is concerned with the construction of political meanings and histories. Engaging with conceptual, photographic, and choreographic strategies, Godoy analyzes and challenges past and present historical moments to imagine different subversive ways of being. At Open Source Gallery, Debtor includes a series of sculptures in the form of animal branding irons. Each sculpture represents the logo of the four financial institutions that own the artist’s student loan debt, which totals approximately $80,000: Citibank, Firstmark Services, Great Lakes, and Navient. According to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, student debt in the United States currently totals about $1.6 trillion, more than credit card and auto loan debt. Presented on walls painted blue—a color used by Citibank to decorate its branches—Godoy’s sculptures are a metaphor to the ways financial institutions submit people into inescapable debt traps.
Debtor brings together multiple audiences and participants within Open Source Gallery through two public programs. On Tuesday, October 29 at 7pm during the 90th anniversary of the Stock Market Crash on Black Tuesday on October 29, 1929, Godoy will host a conversation with writer Mira Dayal to discuss his practice and the politics of debt. On Saturday, November 16 at 3pm, Godoy will host a financial workshop facilitated by Ela Troyano. In this workshop, artists will have the opportunity to build strategies for financial security. Through this exhibition, Godoy seeks to address debt and its effects on political mobilization, art, morality, sexuality, and joy.
Camilo Godoy was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is based in New York, United States. He is a graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012; and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, 2013. Godoy was a 2018 Session Artist, Recess; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, Leslie-Lohman Museum; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, coleção moraes-bar-bosa; 2017 Artist-in-Residence, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP); 2015-2017 Artist-in-Residence, Movement Research; among others. He has presented his work in New York at the Brooklyn Museum, CUE, Danspace Project; Mousonturm, Frankfurt; and Toronto Biennial, Toronto; among others.
Mira Dayal is an artist, critic, and curator based in New York. She is the founding editor of the Journal of Art Criticism, co-curator of the collaborative artist publication prompt:, and an associate editor at Artforum, where she is a regular contributor. In recent texts she has focused on the work of Mona Hatoum, Nina Katchadourian, Marianna Simnett, Camilo Godoy, and Will Rawls. Her studio work often involves site-specific engagements with materials and has been shown at Gymnasium, Lubov, NURTUREart, NARS Foundation, A.I.R. Gallery, Abrons Art Center, and other spaces. Her publications are collected by MoMA Library, Barnard College Library, SVA Library, Notts Zine Library, and fathom library. She was recently a curatorial fellow at SOHO20, where she organized a series of panels on solidarity and feminism in art criticism.
Ela Troyano is an interdisciplinary artist born in Cuba and based in New York City. Troyano has led professional development workshops and coached artists as a Creative Capital workshop leader since 2003, where she designed the Spanish-language career development program and was instrumental in creating artist point-of-view content for the curriculum. Troyano is the Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s artist Fellowship and is a founding member of Strategic Planning Partners.
This program is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Open Source Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
