Carlos Motta, The Good Life

Mexico1_144_144Since 2005, Carlos Motta has recorded over 360 video interviews with pedestrians on the streets of twelve cities in Latin America. The questions he asked covered topics such as individuals’ perceptions of the United States’s foreign policy, democracy, leadership, and governance, and its history of interventions in Latin America and elsewhere. His research resulted in a wide spectrum of responses, with opinions varying according to local histories of U.S. involvement in the region, and specific forms of government in each country.

Thegoodlife-videofilter-x_144_144The Good Life (www.la-buena-vida.info) is an internet archive that features Motta’s interviews, and provides several ways to search the material such as: the type of question asked and the particular themes expressed by the interviewees, organized by city, gender, age group, or occupation. The interviews were recorded in Bogotá, Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Caracas, Venezuela; Guatemala City, Guatemala; La Paz, Bolivia; Managua, Nicaragua; Mexico City, Mexico, Panamá City, Panama; Santiago, Chile; San Salvador, El Salvador; São Paulo, Brazil; and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Thegoodlife-home3_144_144Carlos Motta is a Colombian artist residing in New York. He received his MFA from Bard College and his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. He is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, and has exhibited widely in the US and abroad in solo and group shows. Motta has been awarded various grants and residencies, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, an Art Matters Foundation Grant in 2007 and a Cisneros Fontanals Foundation Subvention Grant in 2006. He has participated in residencies such as the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden and Smack Mellon in New York.

The New Commissions Program is made possible by The Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal grant-making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation of learners by helping libraries and museums serve their communities; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Jerome Foundation; The Greenwall Foundation; and Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support for Carlos Motta’s project was provided by the Puffin Foundation.

www.la-buena-vida.info

Opening: Fall 2008 Exhibitions Opening Sep 26

Exhibition: Carlos Motta, The Good Life Sep 27–Dec 13

Carlos Motta, The Good Life