The Armory Show’s Carla Acevedo-Yates tells us her top 10 must-see exhibitions

September 9, 2022

The Armory Show's Carla Acevedo-Yates talks to us about her selection process for this year's Focus section and tells GalleriesNow her top 10 must-see exhibitions on during the fair.

The selection process for this year’s Focus section consisted of two different methodologies: a personal invitation to galleries who represent artists that I am interested in and whose work aligns with my concept for the section; and unsolicited submissions by galleries which I reviewed and assessed in relation to the themes and the other artists already selected.

For me it was very important to have a diversity of voices and perspectives, and a wide array of mediums and approaches. Artists were not chosen because of their ethnic, racial, or geographic identifications. There are Latinx, Latin American, Caribbean, Black diaspora, African, and other artists whose work dialogues under a Global South conversation, for lack of a better term. The overarching concept that unites the work of these artists relates to what I consider to be our preconceived notions of the landscape as something naturally occurring, when it is in fact constructed, socially, politically, and culturally. In all the works included in the section, the landscape is simultaneously physical, personal, and geographic, where a range of historical and cultural processes collide. What I am calling South-South ecologies within this context is precisely this collision of intersectional issues surrounding the environment, which includes race, gender, and power relations.