About the Artist

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   Jotham Malavé Maldonado (1989, Las Piedras Puerto Rico). Acquires the Associate Degree in Technologies of Telecommunications from the University of Puerto Rico in (2007). He studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Juan in the Department of Painting, which graduated with honors (2014).During his graduation from the MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2019 he was awarded prizes such as The Judith McGregor Caldwell Purchase Prize for the Academy's Permanent Collection and The Woodmere Art Museum Purchase Prize both prizes will host Malavé’s works for their permanent collections. He has had several exhibitions in museums such as the Museum of Art Puerto Rico, Museum of San Juan, Museum of Contemporary Art and in alternative spaces such as La Productora in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He currently lives in Philadelphia where he developed his work

Artist Statement

    I explore my Puerto Rican heritage and humanity through figurative painting, drawing, and sculpture. In PR, our political history, art historical themes, and religious traditions have been buried under oppressive colonial culture and politics for centuries. These are the buried stories that fascinate me. I research and reimagine them in order to keep the socio-political context of my island alive for current and future generations. The layers and substrates of history are not linear especially in the American continent where the revision, uses, and purposes of figurative painting have been cannibalized and inverted to be used against the colonizer. As the Cannibalist manifesto states, we eat all, we became everything. I feel the poetry behind the cannibalizing comes from the defiant resilient action of eating and digesting the interrelations of memory (pre-colonial) and projection (Postcolonial). Within these interactions of cannibalizing and meditation, I work towards a redeeming resolution of my relationship with my environment and Puerto Rican history.

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http://jothammalave.com/

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Instagram @Jotham.malave   |   https://www.instagram.com/jotham.malave/?hl=en

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