Armando Guadalupe Cortés presents Dead Parrot Radio, a large-scale installation of sound and sculptures that reference various communication technologies, investigating what it means to express and be understood—by one another and between species. Throughout his practice, Cortés draws on anecdotes from familial narratives, local folklore, or direct experience to form each exhibition. Dead Parrot Radio is the first instance wherein each work carries its own story, brought together through ideas around the desire for communication, the threshold of migration that presents an inability to go back, and what it means to have a native home that one does not know. These mediations are further explored through a relationship between humans and parrots, chatty birds that can mimic the cadence and patterns of human speech.
Throughout the gallery, a series of large sculptures mimic communication infrastructures: cellular, wifi, and radio towers, and a satellite dish, primarily constructed from steel frames, the artist’s first significant project working in this medium. The installation centers on a stage that offers itself as a site for potential performance, holding a mic and a record player that the artist inherited from his father. In addition to the stage, many of the objects on display will be activated by the artist during two weekends of performances through the exhibition’s run.
The sound component emanates from bullhorn speakers, in an indirect call-and-response between recordings of the artist’s family and their own pet parrots. This disparate display of miscommunication is felt as yearning rather than as clear articulation. It is a soft shout across boundaries, literal and metaphorical, longing for home and family, using technology as a proxy for closeness. Parrot and macaw feathers appear throughout the gallery including—as orbs, and sewn together to create a call flag. In equal blocks of yellow and blue, the flag translates to the letter “K,” which, when flown alone, signifies the message: “I wish to communicate with you.” The layers of potential communication are further complicated when considering parrots’ own visual spectrum, which is wider than that of humans. Due to the feathers’ natural striations, the parrots may not even recognize the blocks as solid colors, nullifying the potential signal. Throughout the exhibition Cortés harnesses the gesture of the call, at times lonely and misunderstood, but carried forth by the strength of longing.
Image: Installation view, Armando Guadalupe Cortés, Dead Parrot Radio. Image courtesy of Smack Mellon. Photo by Etienne Frossard.
Armando Cortés is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. Originally from Urequío, a small farming community in Michoacán, México, Cortés draws inspiration from everyday aspects of his two vastly different worlds. His practice builds on storytelling, object making, and performance traditions. He merges traditional forms and methods from his native home with broader Latin American literary traditions, and contrasts and hybridizes them with elements of his life in the United States.
In his work–ranging from small-scale sculpture to sculpture-based endurance performance–Cortés interweaves influences from his life in a metropolis and a rural farming society. Drawing from oral history, observation, and personal experience, Cortés explores and blends endurance, and labor into his performance, craft and industry into his sculpture, and history into his material choice.
Through his work Cortés strives to propel and make believable narratives often overlooked. This propagation of story takes the form of myth building. This myth-making challenges notions of spectacle and viewership while raising the question of myth as antonym to history. In questioning this dichotomy, Cortés seeks to upend the idea of myth and lore as fiction.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Lincoln Restler, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Wolf Kahn Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, and an Anonymous Donor.
In-kind donations and services are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education and Sage and Coombe Architects.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.