"Here, for a moment" with painter Ramiro Gomez

Date: 

Monday, March 26, 2018, 4:00pm

Location: 

2 Arrow Street, Room 408, Cambridge
ramiro
Ramiro Gomez, American Gardners (After David Hockney's American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) 1968), 2014.
 

Artist Ramiro Gomez’s work makes visible the "invisible," the predominantly Latino workforce serving the affluent areas of American cities. His subjects are the nannies, gardeners, housekeepers: the people behind our images of luxury. Gomez is himself the son of working-class Mexican immigrants. He grew up in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles. He left the California Institute of the Arts before finishing and went to work as a live-in nanny in the hills of West Hollywood CA, where he keenly observed the relationships between heads of households and their staff. Gomez found the dynamic between family and staff to be paradoxical - at once intimate, trusting and close, but also prone to abrupt dissolution without explanation. His experiences as a nanny and as a son of immigrants directly inform his work.

In a society where the innovators are normally acknowledged, Ramiro Gomez's work seeks to recognize the maintainer's, the ones whose labor maintains society. Ramiro will present how art in its various forms can be used to highlight the important role that maintainer's play in our society as well as what the concept of success means.

This event will be followed by a lunchtime workshop on March 27, 2018 at 2 Arrow Street, Room 408.

Presented in collaboration with the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights.