Community Art Works by Michelle Angela Ortiz Currently Showing at the Pino Pascali Foundation Museum

Issue 22 of our affiliated Italian online journal La Macchina Sognante featured a double photo-gallery showcasing the work of  Michelle Angela Ortiz and Corporación Traitraico in collaboration with Delight Lab.  For both galleries follow
this link. The choice of these two artists was in advance of a project LaMacchinaSognante  shares as an organizational partner: the Latidos exhibition inaugurated on October 16, 2021 at the Pino Pascali Foundation Museum in Polignano a Mare (Bari, Italy),which includes work by Ortiz and Corporación Traitraico. The exhibition includes the works of Latin American artists and audiovisual collectives who stand out for having, over time, turned their gaze to the recovery of ancestral roots, denunciation and resistance, telling the intimate story of great human movements as well as great social challenges and the ecology of contemporaneity. Their art goes beyond the limits of individual installations, reclaiming spaces or symbolically occupying them with images.

Michelle Angela Ortiz is a visual artist / muralist / community art educator / filmmaker who uses her art as a vehicle for the representation of people and communities whose stories are often lost in silence. Through community art practices, painting, documentaries and public installations, her works create a safe space for dialogue on some of the deepest issues  communities and people can face. Her work tells stories using emotional and richly elaborated images to reclaim and transform spaces into visual affirmation that reveals the strength and spirit of the community.

In the last 20 years Ortiz has designed and created more than 50 public works of great importance at  the national and international level. Since 2008 she has led art projects for social change in Costa Rica and Ecuador, and as a Cultural Envoy of the US Embassy in Fiji, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Honduras and Cuba. Ortiz was an Art For Justice fellow Fund 2020, PEW Fellowship, Rauschenberg Foundation Artist, Kennedy Center Artist. In 2016 he received the Americans for the Arts Public Art Year in Review award, intended for nationally relevant artistic projects.