COLECTIVA on Luchita Hurtado

Join us for an evening of live music in response to ‘Luchita Hurtado’ by Afro-Latin jazz band COLECTIVA, curated by Cordelia Grierson, Artistic Director of CASA, London's Festival of Latin American Arts.

Responding to each piece in the gallery space, COLECTIVA will explore the themes of the exhibition and pair their varied set with Hurtado’s artwork.

Free to attend.

‘Luchita Hurtado’ is open until 30 Jul 2022.

Featuring previously unseen works from Hurtado’s Sky Skin series, this exhibition centres on the artist’s pursuit of the other worldly and a broader reflection on life and death. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Hurtado’s gaze turned upwards, inverting the downward-facing perspective of her earlier I Am paintings.

In the Sky Skins, Hurtado’s skies are often encircled by craggy earth, referencing the mountains of Taos, New Mexico, where Hurtado spent her summers, as well as the hills of Santa Monica Canyon, where the artist resided the remainder of the year. Born in Maiquetía, Venezuela in 1920, Luchita Hurtado dedicated over eighty years of her extensive career to the investigation of universality and transcendence. Developing her artistic vocabulary through a coalescence of abstraction, mysticism, corporality and landscape, the breadth of her experimentation – with unconventional techniques, materials, and styles – speaks to the diverse cultural and experiential contexts that shaped her life and her art.

Luchita Hurtado, Untitled, 1975 © The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Photo: Jeff McLane

About COLECTIVA COLECTIVA explores the spaces between Afro-Latin music and Jazz while reflecting on themes of sisterhood and female empowerment.

Blending deep Latin groove, experimental textures, wild horn lines and thoughtful arrangements, COLECTIVA’s fresh compositions are rooted in the sounds of Africa, Latin America and the diaspora.

Founded as a creative expression/experiment by trombonist Viva Msimang, COLECTIVA makes space for female and non-binary identifying musicians to come together and collaborate in a new dynamic, free from traditional hierarchical structures, and free from the Male Gaze.

Featuring Sarah Wackett (flute), Poppy Daniels (trumpet), Deanna Wilhelm (trumpet), Viva Msimang (trombone), Luisa Santiago (keys), Maria Grapsa (original composition, keys), Alley Lloyd (bass), Lilli Elina (congas, percussion), Lya Guerrero (drums).