Javier Téllez in Conversation with Rahul Gudipudi

Join us on Thursday, June 20 at 7pm for a conversation between artist Javier Téllez and CARA's Senior Curator Rahul Gudipudi.

Téllez and Gudipudi will discuss the process of making the exhibition Amerika (now on view at CARA through August 11), delving deeper into aspects of Téllez's practice including historical and political references and collaborative forms of filmmaking.

Javier Téllez: Amerika, is Javier Téllez’s (b. 1969, Venezuela; lives and works in New York) first institutional solo exhibition in New York City in nearly two decades. The exhibition showcases a newly commissioned film installation alongside a series of works related to the film, as well as a selection from a never-before-exhibited atlas of photographic images cropped and collected by the artist from illustrated magazines and books over the past twenty years. 

Learn more about the exhibition here.

About the Speakers

Javier Téllez (b. 1969) is a Venezuelan artist based in New York. His work reflects a sustained interest in questioning exclusion as a social construct, while bringing peripheral groups and invisible situations to the fore of contemporary art addressing migration, disabilities and mental illness as marginalizing conditions. Tellez’s projects have often involved working with those segregated by society to produce film installations that question power structures and the notions of the normative.
Téllez has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Thurgau Kunstmuseum, Warth, Switzerland (2022); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2018); the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester (2018); the Blanton Museum, Austin; the San Francisco Art Institute (2014); Kunsthaus Zürich (2014); SMAK, Ghent (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2011); CAM-Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2010); Aspen Art Museum (2006); The Power Plant, Toronto (2005); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2005); and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2000). He has participated in group exhibitions at Guggenheim Museum, New York; MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Castello di Rivoli, Torino; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; ICA, Boston; and Renaissance Society, Chicago, as well as Aichi Triennial (2019); dOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany (2012); Manifesta, Trento, Italy; Sydney Biennial; and the Whitney Biennial, New York (all 2008); Venice Biennale (2001 and 2003); and Yokohama Triennial (2001). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999, and in 2016 the Global Mental Health Award for Innovation in the Arts from Columbia University, New York.

Rahul Gudipudi is Senior Curator at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) in New York, United States, where he contributes to CARA’s programs across exhibitions, commissions, publications, public programs and fellowships. Gudipudi was recently Adjunct Curator at the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennial 2024 under the Artistic Direction of Ute Meta Bauer. Before joining CARA, Gudipudi was Exhibitions Curator, and later Senior Curator at Art Jameel, Dubai (2019–23), leading on exhibitions and discursive-performative programs at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and at Hayy Jameel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was on the curatorial advisory and editorial boards for The New Alphabet School program (2019–22) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, Germany. He is currently on the advisory board of The Story Of, a foundation and transdisciplinary learning platform in Goa, India. He is also a board member of the Anthropocene Commons, global research and response network organizing education and initiatives on climate change adaptation and collective action.

Images by Kris Graves.