For the latest iteration of the Elevate series, artist Beatriz Monteavaro has created the site-specific installation Return to Tomorrow, a lo-fi, slow motion rocket ship to outer space inside the Casa Faena. This new work references ‘Return to Tomorrow’, an episode of Star Trek from the original series in which the minds of Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk are overtaken by alien forces. Approximating ‘Space Mountain’ and the now-defunct ‘Mission to Mars’, both rides from Walt Disney World that simulate space travel, the glowing illuminated interior of the elevator cab is both a testament to the analog and a fantasy of the future. Monteavaro’s dreamily nostalgic rocket ride includes portholes that look out onto hand-drawn glow-in-the dark stars and forgotten satellites. Viewers are invited to bask in a black-light time warp that transports us back to a possible utopian future
Monteavaro’s work is influenced by the British punk rock music scene, science fiction and horror movies, and the fantasy environments of Disney Theme Parks. For several years her work has consisted of synchromystic, genre-mixing adventures where 80‘s rock stars and personalities such as Adam Ant, Gary Numan, Siouxsie Sioux and Malcolm McLaren have been portrayed as superheroes, arch-villains, revolutionaries, space travelers and Lovecraftian gods. In her recent work she has taken to reappropriating her own collection of her paintings and drawings into shelters and ripped and reassembled collages, in an attempt to find different uses for art in a possible utopian future.
About Beatriz Monteavaro
Beatriz Monteavaro (b. 1971, Cuba) grew up in Miami, where she lives and works. She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia in 1996 and has since had solo exhibitions at Locust Projects, Miami (2015), Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami (2014); Galerie Sultana, Paris, France (2011 and 2009); Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles (2010); Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami (2008 and 2005); and Derek Eller Gallery, New York (2006), among others. A book of her work, Quiet Village, was published in 2009.