The Power Plant

Canadian-Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa works across media, using forms including sculpture and performance that draw on literature, Latin American history, folklore and childhood memories. Referring to traumatic or tragic events – in particular Guatemala’s civil war (1960–96), which forced Ramírez-Figueroa and his family to immigrate to Vancouver as refugees in the 1980s – his works are imbued with a playful, sometimes dream-like spirit. Varied objects in sculptural installations, and the artist’s own body in performance works, become tools to consider the constructions of identity, architecture and history.

The exhibition will encompass works from the past decade that reveal the range of Ramírez-Figueroa’s preoccupations, from conspiracy theories to bird song and Guatemala’s architectural history. It will also include a newly commissioned work, which takes as its starting point the cacaxte, a ladder-like tool for carrying objects on one’s back common among indigenous populations of Latin America. In this new work, Ramírez-Figueroa reinvents the object to consider its associations with colonial oppression alongside its mythical significance.

LEARN MORE

Watch Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa's interview with The Power Plant here.

**Watch In Conversation |

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa with Lauren Barnes, 25 January 2020 from The Power Plant

WINTER 2020 PROGRAM GUIDE

Click here to read more about The Power Plant's Winter 2020 exhibitions and programming for the season!

EXPANDING ACCESS

Listen to Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa's exhibition wall text here:

READING ROOM

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa – by Natalie Bell, João Mourão, Luís Silva (eds.), and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

Two Flamingos: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa – by Katia Baudin, Dorothee Mosters, et al. Kunstmuseum Krefeld

Complete Works and Other Stories – by Augusto Monterroso

The Popol Vuh – Translated by Michael Bazzett

SITElines 2018, Casa Tomada – Edited by Lucy Flint