Alicia Reyes McNamara was the sixth recipient of the South London Gallery Post-Graduate Residency from 2016 - 2017.
Alicia Reyes McNamara was in residence at the SLG’s Outset Artists’ Flat for six months and her solo exhibition Nowhere Else was presented in the first floor galleries from 7 April – 11 June 2017.
Reyes McNamara’s work deals with issues of displacement, particularly within a double diaspora. Her work aims to challenge incomplete identities constructed by two-dimensional ideas of Latino culture. It acknowledges the absurdity, and at times vulgarity, in the projected images found within the media’s exaggerated caricatures and telenovela kitsch.
Her work translates the Mexican-American or Chicana identity through a British lens, where preconceptions are very different from those in the United States. She has adopted a cartoon-like aesthetic for its approachability to convey difficult subject matter and make it appear light and at times humorous and all the more revealing. Reyes McNamara is interested in the changing identity of the Latino diaspora and how authenticity is being negotiated within the hollow remnants of Western imposed views of the tropics.
To commemorate her exhibition Reyes McNamara created an exclusive edition which can be purchased through the SLG shop.
Alicia Reyes McNamara received her MFA from the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art in 2016, after completing her BFA at California College of the Arts. Her work has been included in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition at the Bluecoat and ICA.
The residency included provision of a studio thanks to the generous support of Artists Studio Company (ASC).