Frieze Projects, the fair’s curated program, will feature a major new commission by ektor garcia. Titled la llorona, garcia's installation joins past works with new, offering a moment of pause within the continual and cyclical timeline that is the artist’s practice. To garcia, both the artwork and its materials are alive, evolving together through a constant and committed creative activity. Coming together in new forms, garcia’s installation prompts what it means for an artwork to be flexible, unencumbered, and open to change—freed from both his and our expectations.

The teardrop motif appears throughout garcia’s site-specific installation, taking as its title the Mexican legend of La Llorona, or the weeping woman. Having drowned her children bore from a wealthy Spaniard in an anguished act of protest against his abandonment of her, La Llorona is condemned to cry for eternity. Suggesting not only tears but also blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids, this suspended form remains open to interpretation as well as materially and metaphysically embedded in the work. Like the apparition of La Llorona herself, the droplet might also invoke the figure of the Yod found in the tarot; the appearance of which indicates a deep mystical energy that courses behind the moment at hand.

garcia’s work consists not only of materials like metal, glass, leather, textiles, and ceramic, but also the elements of travel, language, patina, and history. Where time itself becomes a medium, garcia’s practice is one time-keeping. As Chicana poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldúa writes, “there really was another side to La Llorona—a powerful, positive side, a side that represents the Indian part and the female part of us.” Anzaldúa continues, “things are not always what they seem to be.”

ektor garcia (b. 1985, Red Bluff, California) received an MFA from Columbia University, New York and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has presented solo exhibitions at SculptureCenter, New York; Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; James Fuentes, New York; Empty Gallery, Hong Kong; Cooper Cole, Toronto; and kurimanzutto, Mexico City; and has participated in group exhibitions at the New Museum, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Prospect 5 New Orleans; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; LAXART, Los Angeles; and 80WSE, New York; among other venues. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum, New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. garcia lives and works nomadically.

ektor garcia: la llorona is realized with the support of Maestro Dobel Tequila.

Special thanks to Christine Messineo.