Working in performance, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (b. 1978, Guatemala City, Guatemala) creates dreamlike scenes that build on references to literature, folklore, magic, and childhood memories. Engaging fantasy and allegory, Ramírez-Figueroa’s installations combine sculpture and experimental theater to transfigure everyday images and objects into symbolic tableaux. Though the artist’s works often exude a sense of whimsy and playfulness, they also allude to tragic and traumatic events that have shaped the social and political climate of present-day Guatemala.

“The House at Kawinal,” the artist’s first solo exhibition in the US, presented a recent performance for video, Life in His Mouth, Death Cradles Her Arm (2016), together with a new body of sculptures inspired in part by the artist’s research into the effects of the construction of the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam in Guatemala in the early 1980s. To build the dam, the Guatemalan government forcibly displaced thousands of Achi Mayan people through brutal, military-led massacres that wiped out villages throughout the Chixoy River Valley. The flooding caused by the dam also submerged the Late Mayan (1100–1524 AD) city of Kawinal, the ruins of which are now largely invisible and inaccessible. For his New Museum installation, Ramírez-Figueroa presented a series of figurative works that suggested a lost and fragmented domestic space and evoked this violent displacement to reflect on its lasting impact on families, indigenous heritage, and the natural landscape.

Concurrent with his exhibition in the Lobby Gallery, three of the artist’s recent performances for video were on view as part of the Museum’s ongoing Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of video works by emerging contemporary artists. Collectively, these works shared motifs of sleep and dream states as well as references to spirits and silent specters of the past.

The exhibition was curated by Natalie Bell, Associate Curator.

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa was born in 1978 in Guatemala City, Guatemala, where he currently lives and works. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Lissabon (2017); CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2017); Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany (2017); and Gasworks, London (2015). His works have been included in the Venice Biennale (2017); the São Paulo Biennial (2016); the Lyon Biennale (2015); and the Gwangju Biennial (2014), among many others. His performances have been hosted by the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2016); Tate Modern, London (2015); and Castello di Rivoli, Italy (2013). The artist received the Mies van der Rohe Award (2017), a DAAD fellowship (2015), and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2012).