Masks

Assembly presents a limited collection of 10 photographic NFTs from Rodrigo Valenzuela's series "Masks." These self-portraits made in Valenzuela's studio, recreate profiles of protesters in Santiago, Chile wearing makeshift gas masks constructed from discarded soda cans and bleach bottles. Inspired by Pablo Neruda’s epic Canto General, this series, like most of Valenzuela's work, straddles documentary and fiction—his own biography and that of other Latin American people. In these portraits, the protestors become more than defiant agitators. They are architects of a new universe.

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Rodrigo Valenzuela is a Chilean-born, Los Angeles-based artist working in photography, video, painting, and installation. Using autobiographical threads to inform larger universal fields of experience, his work constructs narratives, scenes, and stories that point to the tensions found between the individual and communities. Much of his work deals with the experience of undocumented immigrants and laborers. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in recent solo exhibitions at Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna; the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, TN; Klowdenmann Gallery, Los Angeles; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago, Chile. He has held several artist residencies across the US and Canada including a fellowship at the Drawing Center, New York; the Core Fellowship at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME and the MacDowell Colony, NE. In 2021, Valenuzlea was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography. He earned his MFA in Photomedia at the University of Washington, Seattle, and has a BA in philosophy from Evergreen State College and a BFA in art history and photography from the University of Chile.