Caleb Duarte

• Caleb Duarte: IZTALI, “Reality is a Dream”
• Sculptural Performance, Community Collaboration and Painting
• October 28–December 13, 2019
• Reception Wednesday, November 6 at 6 pm
• Artist talk at 6:30 pm
• View Catalog

Artist Biography

Caleb Duarte is best known for creating temporary installations using construction type frameworks such as beds of dirt, cement, and objects suggesting basic shelter. His installations within institutional settings become sights for performance as interpretations of his community collaborations. Duarte has created public works and community performances at the World Social Forum in Mumbai India, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, El Pital, Honduras, and throughout Mexico and the United States. He has collaborated with autonomous indigenous Zapatista communities, communities in movement, and working children and refugees.

Duarte is co-founder, along with artist MIa Eve Rollow, of EDELO, a Spanish acronym for (Where the United Nations Used To BE). EDELO was a house of art in movement and an international artist residency of diverse practices in San Cristobal De Las Casas, Chiapas, México. The project challenged the traditional artist residency and art spaces in that it placed residents alongside rural autonomous communities that have been using performance, theater, poetry, and a rich visual culture to demand drastic social, political, and economic change. The space invited collaborators to live and create within a period of time. Residents were from PHDs to jugglers, contemporary artist, activist, educators, rural farmers, and autonomous rebal community members.

Through EDELO, he was lead organizer of the ZAPANTERA NEGRA project, in collaboration with Rigo 23, Mia Eve Rollow, and artist and once Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party Emory Douglas. Zapantera Negra united Zapatistas (EZLN) with Black Panther Party esthetics to investigate the use of the body and visual culture in both distinct political and artistic movements by facilitating encounters, workshops, mural events, and residencies in Zapatista territories.

Duarte is professor of sculpture at Fresno City College and continues to create sculptural performances, installations and paintings.