Daniel Bejar

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What Is My Work About?My recent work appropriates the myths, signs, and culture found in the public sphere, and through forms of performance and intervention new layers of information are introduced into familiar public and social systems which challenge viewers to question the familiar, and envision alternative models and possibilities. I believe it is my job as an artist to brush history against the grain, and by employing modes of evocation that bring the past into the present, a rupture can be created, which provides and opportunity to explore unresolved histories, pose critical questions and affect social change.

 

Artist Statement
DANIEL BEJAR
dabejar@gmail.com / www.danielbejar.com
718-288-2602

My recent work appropriates the myths, signs, and culture found in the public sphere, and through forms of performance and intervention new layers of information are introduced into familiar public and social systems which challenge viewers to question the familiar, and envision alternative models and possibilities.
I believe it is my job as an artist to brush history against the grain, and by employing modes of evocation that bring the past into the present, a rupture can be created, which provides and opportunity to explore unresolved histories, pose critical questions and affect social change.

In the following works, the politics of place and idenity in the Information Age are explored through forms of performance, intervention, photography and new media.
“Promised Land” transforms a real estate sign, which originally read “commercial land for lease” to “promised land for lease”. The intervention exposes the reality that the Promised Land is available for a price, while also questioning the ethos of the American Dream and it’s allusions of upward mobility in the midst of recessions, predatory home lending, Wall Street corruption, and an ever-increasing wealth gap.
Another recent project “Operation Guest” is a series of site-specific performances documented through photography where I learned that the Mexican Government disrupted a plot dubbed “Operation Guest” to smuggle Saadi Gaddafi, the son of the Muammar Gaddafi, from Niger, Africa to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, MX under the assumed name Daniel Bejar Hanan. My name is Daniel Bejar, and we also share a similar likeness. Utilizing this bizarre coincidence as a unique opporotunity to continue my research into questions of identity, authorship, and geo-poliitcs I traveled to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, MX to realize this story through documented site-specific performances in the safe houses, beaches and resturaunts Saadi was to spend the rest of his days in.
The project “Rec-elections” is a series of site-specific performances and interventions where I appropriated the posters of past historical Presidential campaigns and re-inserted them back into the context of the 2012 United States Presidential campaign. Through performances in protests and rallies at last year’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL, the project critiqued the weaponization of nostaligia and history as tools of manipulation within politics.

In “Neither Here Nor There” I traveled by plane and boat to the halfway point between the United States and Puerto Rico to document the site through photography. Acting as an allegory, the halfway point is a symbol for Puerto Rico’s current political status as an unincorporated territory of the United States, as well as my own multi-cultural experience. Upon returning I uploaded the image into the Google Earth application where the halfway point was made “real” and can now be found by the public.
And in my ongoing project “The Googlegänger” I discovered there was another Daniel Bejar who happened to be a rock star. I began re-staging images of him, which were pulled off of Google Image Search. The re-staged images are uploaded back onto the Internet where both images co-exist questioning ideas identity and personal history.
It’s projects such as these, where I am inserting my work and myself into the everyday to ask critical questions through radical poetics pushing the gesture of production beyond art.

CV
DANIEL BEJAR
dabejar@gmail.com / www.danielbejar.com
718-288-2602

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

education

2007 MFA State University of New York, New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, (Sculpture)
1999 BFA Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL

awards & residencies

2013 Atlantic Center for the Arts, Associate Artist with Coco Fusco, New Smyrna Beach, FL
2013 The Art Law Program, New York, NY
2013 Blade of Grass Fellow 2012-2013, Blade of Grass, New York, NY
2012 NYU Visiting Scholar, NYU Steinhardt School, New York, NY 2011-2012
2012 Artist-in-Residence, Workspace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY 2011-2012
2011 SOMA Summer Residency, SOMA Mexico City, D.F.
2011 Hot Picks, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Swing Space Residency, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY
2009 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2008 AIM 28, Artist in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY

selected exhibitions (*denotes solo exhibition)

2013 5×5 Castelló13 International Contemporary Art Prize, ESPAI D’art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain (upcoming)
2013 Empire, Five Myles, Brooklyn, NY
2013 Shadow Puppets: Traces of New Documentary Practices, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
2012 Conflux Festival 2012, NYU, Barney Building Gallery, New York, NY
2012 Public Trust, Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY
2012 Is This Free…?, NURTUREart, Brooklyn, NY
2012 *Bushwick Basel, NURTUREart, Brooklyn, NY
2012 March 2012, SITE Santa Fe, NM
2012 Systemic Risk, NURTUREart, Brooklyn, NY
2011 Parts And Labor, Abrons Art Center, New York, NY
2011 Art in Odd Places: Ritual, 14th Street, New York, NY
2011 30: A Brooklyn Salon, BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2011 El Museo’s Bienal, The (S) Files 2011, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY
2011 Full Screen, Big Screen Project, Eventi Hotel Public Plaza, New York, NY
2011 Sorta-Rican, Taller Boricua, New York, NY
2011 Loss Generation, Seton Gallery at University of New Haven, New Haven, CT
2010 Harvest Moon, Peripher Gallery, Zürich, Switzerland
2010 Past Place, Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
2010 *Get Lost! (NYC), Culpeper Gallery, Abrons Art Center, New York, NY
2010 I’m Caught Up…, Bronx Art Center, Bronx, NY
2010 Hope-A-Holic, Newhouse Center For Contemporary Art, Staten Island, NY
2010 Rompe Puesto, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY
2009 Conflux City 2009, New York, NY
2009 The New Easy, Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany
2009 Queens Sky, Local Project, L.I.C., NY
2009 (re)terrain, VertextList, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Poverty Mailart, Hans-Sachs-Haus,Stuttgart, Germany
2008 The New Easy, Agentur, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2008 A Wrinkle in Time, BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2008 How Soon is Now?, Artists in the Marketplace 28, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY
2008 The World is a Handkerchief, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Long Island City, NY
2008 The Audacity of Desperation, PS122, New York, NY
2008 Urban Identity, Monkeytown, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
2007 *Collecting the Sun, The Icehouse, Phoenix, AZ
2007 Digital Media Festival Long Island, IMAC Theater, Huntington, NY
2007 Snap to Grid, LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA
2007 The Uncanny Valley, Samule Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York, New Paltz, NY
2007 CAA New York Area MFA Exhibition, Hunter College / Times Square Gallery, New York, NY
2006 Process of Elimination, MFA Thesis Exhibition Samule Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York,
New Paltz
2006 Peekskill Project 2006, Peekskill, NY
2006 Temporary Cities – Russia, National Centre for Contemporary Arts NCCA, Moscow, Russia
2006 Temporary Cities – Klaipeda, Lithuania, Cultural Communication Centre of Klaipeda
2006 Smoke and Mirrors: Photography and Performance, Siegfred Gallery, Ohio University, Athens, OH.
2005 Artistic Fragments 2005, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY

artist talks, lectures, panels
2013 Panelist, Traces of New Documentary Practices, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
2013 Artist, Artist Talk, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
2010 Artist, Artist Talk, NSCAD University, Halifax, NS Canada
2008 Artist, Artist Talk, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI

bibliography

2012 LaGaccia David. “Past Actions, Past Gestures: Conflux 2012”, Hyperallergic.com, October 29, 2012
2012 Hurst, Howard. “Art Is Free…Sometimes”, Hyperallergic.com, September 4, 2012
2012 Guzman, Alissa. “Bushwick Basel, a Very Small Art Fair”, Hyperallergic.com, June 4, 2012
2012 Carroll, Brendan. “Risky Business”, Hyperallergic.com, February, 24, 2012
2011 Cotter, Holland. “Artists Whose Vitality Flows From the Streets”, The New York Times. June 17, 2011
2011 Sanneh, Kelefa. “Two Bejars”, The New Yorker Magazine. March, 21, 2011: 21-22
2010 Fressola, Michael J. “Hope-a-Holic”, Staten Island Advance. May, 2, 2010
2009 Archey, Karen. “The New Easy”, Map Magazine. Issue 19 / Autumn 2009
2009 Slome, Manon, Simon, Joshua. The Aesthetics of Terror. Italy; Charta, 2009
2008 Taylor, Johanna. “A Wrinkle in Time”, “A Wrinkle in Time” catalogue: 6
2008 Lopez, Erin-Riley. “How Soon Is Now?”, AIM 28 exhibition catalogue
2007 Wood, Alison “The Uncanny Valley”, Roll Magazine, August, 2007: 46
2006 Genocchio, Benjamin. “Down by the River”, The New York Times. September, 30, 2006
2006 Byrd, Jeffery. “Smoke and Mirrors, Photography and Performance”. Catalogue, 2006: 8