Pablo Helguera
Pablo Helguera (b. 1971, Mexico City) is an interdisciplinary artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work focuses on a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical and theatrical performances, and written fiction.
Helguera’s work as an educator has usually intersected his interest as an artist, making his work often reflect on issues of interpretation, dialogue, and the role of contemporary culture in a global reality. This intersection is best exemplified in his project, The School of Panamerican Unrest, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, making 40 stops in between. Covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work for the new generation of artworks regarded under the area of socially engaged art.
Pablo Helguera performed individually at the Museum of Modern Art in 2003, where he showed his work Parallel Lives. His musical composition, Endingness, has been performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Helguera has exhibited or performed at venues such as the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; ICA Boston; RCA London; 8th Havana Biennal, PERFORMA 05, Havana; Shedhalle, Zurich; MoMA P.S.1; Brooklyn Museum; IFA Galerie, Bonn; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; MALBA Museum; Ex-Teresa Espacio Alternativo; The Bronx Museum; The Brooklyn Museum; The Guggenheim; SITE Santa Fe Biennial; Artist Space; BAM; and Sculpture Center, amongst many others.