Jorge Alberto Perez is a Cuban-born artist, curator and writer and graduate of the Bard College/International Center of Photography MFA program in New York City where he was honored as a Director’s Scholarship Fellow in 2011. Perez works in a variety of media including, but not limited to, photography, collage, installation and writing. In his work he questions the truthfulness of the image within the economy of desire in visual culture as well as the allegorical value of fragmented images. His intensive labor of cutting and archiving image-fragments that are deployed sometimes for more than one image or installation is an ongoing exploration in the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s “Denkbilder,” in that they express a libidinal economy of fragmented desires. In these new forms he creates allegorical images of unknowable purpose that he liken to the stained glass windows of the unconscious mind. These allegories, with mysterious central characters and questionable narratives ultimately reference a failure of signification.
In 2015, Perez was selected as curator-in-residence at Baxter St./CCNY with the exhibit "The Three Traumas" as well as adjunct curator for the International Center of Photography's gallery at Mana Contemporary with the exhibit "The Future is Forever." This year his work will be in the group show "Race and Revolution" on Governor's Island and was featured as an emerging international artist on Captured52.com. His documentary photography has been published my the BBC, SEMIOTEXT(E), Social Text among others.
