24 Oct 2019

CAMILO GODOY: DEBTOR

Open Source Gallery presents Debtor, an exhibition of new works by Camilo Godoy.

Camilo Godoy's practice is concerned with the construction of political and history. Engaging with conceptual, photographic, and choreographic strategies, Godoy analyzes and challenges past and present historical moments to imagine different subversive ways of being. At Open Source Gallery, Debtor includes a series of sculptures in the form of animal branding irons. Each sculpture represents the logo of the four financial institutions that own the artist's student loan debt, which totals approximately $80,000: Citibank, Firstmark Services, Great Lakes, and
Navient. According to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, student debt in the United States currently totals about $1.6 trillion, more than credit card and auto loan debt. Presented on walls painted blue—a color used by Citibank to decorate its branches—Godoy's sculptures are a metaphor to the ways financial institutions submit people into inescapable debt traps.

Debtor brings together multiple audiences and participants within Open Source Gallery through two public programs. On Tuesday, October 29 at 7pm during the 90th anniversary of the Stock Market Crash on Black Tuesday on October 29, 1929, Godoy will host a conversation to interrogate the current student debt crisis in the United States. On Saturday, November 16 at 3pm, Godoy will host a financial workshop facilitated by Ela Troyano. In this workshop artists will have the opportunity to build strategies for financial security. Through this exhibition, Godoy seeks to address the history and politics of debt and its effects on political mobilization, art, morality, sexuality, and joy.

Camilo Godoy was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is based in New York, United States. He is a graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012; and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, 2013. Godoy was a 2018 Session Artist, Recess; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, Leslie-Lohman Museum; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, coleção moraes-bar-bosa; 2017 Artist-in-Residence, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP); 2015-2017 Artist-in-Residence, Movement Research; among others. He has presented his work in New York at the Brooklyn Museum, CUE, Danspace Project; Mouson-turm, Frankfurt; and Toronto Biennial, Toronto; among others.

This program is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Open Source Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.