Oradores, Oradores2007, 30x30 cm
Untitled2010, 42 × 56 cm
William Cordova, born in 1971 in Lima, Peru, lives and works in Miami and New York.

William Cordova’s work is tied to an urban ecology of obsolescence, disparity, and displacement. Busted cars, trashed tires, discarded shoes, machetes, speakers and books yellowed with age provide the material support and iconographic program for his drawings, collages, and installations. For the artist, these material choices reference the reality of lived experience, as opposed to the spectacle of culture, mass-produced for constant consumption.

His work is in such public collections as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Yale Art Gallery, New Haven; Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru; Ellipse Foundation, Cascais, Portugal; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; and La Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba; among others. In 2006 Arndt & Partner Berlin presented the first solo show of William Cordova in Germany. Recent solo exhibitions include 'smoke signals: viviendo pa’ la ciudad' at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (2012) and 'yawar mallku (royalty, abduction & exile)' at La Conservera in Murcia, Spain (2011). He has held numerous residencies and is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.


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