William Cordovas sculptures, installations and works on paper are very much bound up with his transcultural biography that took him from Lima, Peru, where he was born, via Miami, Florida, to the many other places where he has lived or spent time in the US and Europe. His sujets are drawn from a continuum of radical movements and players in struggles for self-determination. “Revealing the intersections between magical realism and social realism, he orchestrates collisions between ancient and recent histories, oral tradition and revolutionary texts to make way for an in-between, transitional, and ultimately transformative space.” (Rashida Bumbray)
Read MoreIn “Bird in Space (for Bobby Rush)” (2007/08), for example, Cordova constructs a monument to revolutionary political ideology. Combining reclaimed wood from the streets of Chicago, a Peruvian Hyacinth bird feather, and the arm of a pair of eyeglasses Cordova stages Charlie Parker, Brâncuşi and Bobby Rush among many others within a pantheon of transnational figures.
In addition to staging solo exhibitions e.g. at the Fleming Museum, University of Vermont (2009), the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005/06), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2003), he has recently taken part in groundbreaking group exhibitions, such as „NeoHooDoo“, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas (2008), and „Street Level“, Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2007). His works were presented in the San Juan Triennial, San Juan (2009), the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008), and the Biennale di Venezia (2003). In 2008 he was artist-in-residence at Artpace, San Antonio, Texas. In 2006 Arndt & Partner Berlin presented the first solo show of William Cordova in Germany.
